Author: Abbi Mancini
Photo by: Dead Good
Welcome back to the monthly KXSU book club! This month, I decided to switch it up a little and read Red Dragon, the first installment of the Hannibal Lecter series by Thomas Harris. Before I begin, I would like to state that this book is RATED R. There are many themes such as murder, crime, cannibalism, strong language, gore, and sexual content. Please do not read this book or this review if you are sensitive to any of these.
I have been a big fan of the film The Silence of the Lambs for many years now; it completely blew me away when I first saw it when I was—maybe a little too young—twelve. I genuinely believe it is one of the best movies in history. My love for the classic thriller drove me to finally explore the written series. Red Dragon is the first in the three-part series, The Silence of the Lambs being the second in the trilogy. Of course, only being familiar with the second installment, I was truly unaware of what was to come in this book. We follow Will Graham, former FBI profiler as he chases a serial murderer by the name of Francis Dolarhyde, nicknamed “The Tooth Fairy” by the press due to his biting of each victim. Dolarhyde is one of the best villains ever written. Harris creates a truly disturbed individual and provides insights into why Dolarhyde does what he does through flashbacks into a childhood in which he was neglected and punished in odd ways that continue to haunt him into adulthood. Harris somehow makes this cold-blooded killer sympathetic, and you really can’t help but feel bad for the man. Dolarhyde is especially driven to kill due to his obsession with the William Blake painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in the Sun. He feels drawn to the red dragon in the painting and believes each person he kills, of “changes” as he justifies to himself, will being him closer to becoming the dragon. At one point, he breaks into the Brooklyn Museum and eats the true painting in order to further become one with the dragon. As the story progresses, Dolarhyde begins to regret his actions, as he believes they were the actions of the dragon, possessing him to kill. This book really is wild.
Will Graham is hired to find this monster by the FBI, specifically by Jack Crawford, the agent-in-charge of the Behavioral Science Unit. Graham was pivotal in finding and capturing Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the serial cannibal several years prior. Graham was injured and traumatized by Lecter, leaving the FBI and retiring to the Florida Keys with his wife and his stepson. Crawford convinced Graham to return to the job to hunt Dolarhyde with the help of the imprisoned Lecter. I don’t want to give away any more of the plot, because there are twists and turns that kept me on the edge of my seat and helped me to finish the nearly 400-page book in one sitting.
This book is extremely well written, giving an interesting look, however fictional, into the FBI, criminal psychology, as well as how past events can form and shape us to the extreme. It presents a villain who is truly despicable, but with obvious reasoning as to why he is that way. I was constantly drawn into the story from top to bottom and felt compelled in one way or another to every character featured. This book was so exquisite, it drove me to immediately get my hands on the next books of the series and read those as well, but I won’t talk about those here, as I have far too much to say about how good they are.
The only problems I had with it were extremely trivial, and I only call them problems for complete lack of a better word. My first “problem” is that I love The Silence of the Lambs film so much, that whenever Lecter was described, I would think, “but that’s not how Anthony Hopkins looks exactly”, which can always be a trouble if you watch the movie before reading the book. My other “issue” was that this book was set and published in 1981, before the widespread use of DNA in FBI criminal investigation in 1986. This was somewhat frustrating to a person accustomed to the idea of DNA use in criminal investigations when they find saliva, blood, hair, and other bodily fluids of the killer at the crime scenes however, in this book, the author continues to rely on fingerprint and dental matching. I had to constantly remind myself that DNA use wasn’t a thing yet every time the investigators would discuss how they knew it was the same killer per crime scene because the saliva found at each was from the same person. Those are literally the only things at all wrong with this book, and they were problems created by my brain and who I am as a person.
In conclusion, Red Dragon by Thomas Harris is a near perfect novel and I highly recommend it to any true crime, thriller, or gore fan (preferably, that is, over the age 18).
If you’d like to let me know your own thoughts and feelings about Red Dragon, get in contact with me on Twitter @abbikxsu and read next month’s book along with me! Next month, I will be reading Becoming, the autobiography of Michelle Obama which can be found here.
ABBI MANCINI | Chai Latte | KXSU Arts Reporter