I Read Thomas Harris’ ‘Red Dragon’.

I love The Silence of the Lambs as a film. At the time when I was getting into it as more than just a ‘cool movie with the guy in the mask’, I had never really considered it being a book, let alone a series. That wasn’t really my mindset. I think even when the next set of movies came out, they never really rotated into my radar. I’m not sure why I was casting such an attention deficit on this series, but I was neglecting the entire Thomas Harris influence. I honestly don’t think I would have been that interested in it at that time either. I was so needled in on fantasy novels and a whole different slice of the world that something this dialed in would have really felt uninteresting to me.

I don’t know why I was like that, and honestly don’t truly understand the person that I was anymore.

This book was an absolute thrill ride through 94% of the entire work. Having now watched not only the movies, but also having seen the Mads Mikkelsen television series (one of my favorites of all time at this point) diving into this book was a joy. Not that serial killers, perversion, deep childhood trauma or sadistic murder is a joy per se, but the feeling I had of wanting to come back to this book again and again was brilliant.

While Hannibal Lecter does make two or three brief appearances in this book, I was surprised to know that this was the first piece in which he appeared. Will Graham was the star here, and such an interesting character to present in a book before so much of our fiction and media has taken a far darker turn than it had in 1981. The psychological thrill of this book and the way that Graham has a darkness within him, a way to decipher an underbelly of the way a killer’s mind works takes the Sherlock Holmes thing in a whole new direction. I don’t read a ton of mystery novels, but if more of them took on this kind of edge, I would definitely want to add a bunch more to my shelves. There was an element to this book that granted a seedy and ‘yucky’ side to the way that he would investigate these scenes and the mind of the killer, but didn’t seep too deep into the edgelord crevices that are all too pervasive in the modern era of True Crime Junkies.

Our central killer is also an interesting study, someone who is intent on the most grueling and perverse murders meant to satisfy a dark and sexual hunger. The way Harris is able to get us so close to the killer here, to be able to feel the skin, to skeeve at the breath, to not want to look away at their deformity… brilliantly written. So much of the creepiness of this, the intimacy of the way it’s written is something that feels so cutting edge for the time. I’m not too familiar with the style of this time, but I don’t think this level of exposure was prevalent. I mean, the way that Dolarhyde is so deranged, the way he goes about trying to remedy his issues towards the end are so twisted and strange, but in a way that feels like something from a more modern A24 movie or something. It doesn’t feel like the ‘tone’ of what a lot of fiction, especially in this specific genre, was doing in the 1980s. If I’m wrong, that’s great. PLEASE let me know what else I should be reading from that time. I’d be intrigued to see a lot more of this type of thing from that era.

I wanted to know a little bit more about what else Thomas Harris would have read that got him into the mindspace to write this book, along with what might have continued to inspire the character of Hannibal Lecter, etc. My results were a bit disappointing overall as the first two things that came up were Edgar Allen Poe and ‘the character Dracula’. It felt a little disingenuous on some level. I am a big fan of wearing one’s influence on their sleeve and really trying to expose people to more stuff that you want them to read or digest. The general sense I got from those responses was that he was kind of doing the whole brushing of his sleeve, like, “yeahh, I kind of just came up with this on my own, not a big deal.”

End of the day, I really loved reading this book until today, the final 40 pages. I think the way that a lot of the crime spree tidies up towards the end feels extraordinarily rushed, especially considering the drama and detail building up to this point. Not only does everything come together very neatly, but also in a true climax, the actual finale only lasts about a page and a half and disturbs the rhythm of the ending and ultimately the whole book. I liked it as a whole, but this last bit kind of threw me off.

I definitely recommend this book. Knowing how big the Graham and Lecter pantheon grew, I think it’s incredible how it all started. I can see how deeply this book influenced a lot of future crime fiction and psychological thrillers and I look forward to diving more into the series as well!