A serial killer nicknamed Buffalo Bill is abducting and murdering young women across the American Midwest. Jack Crawford, head of the FBI's Behavioral Science unit, sends Clarice Starling, a promising trainee at Quantico, to interview Dr Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist held in a Baltimore asylum for a series of grotesque murders.
Lecter agrees to help, but only in exchange for personal details of Clarice's own past, including a painful memory from her childhood in Montana. Their tense exchanges form the heart of the novel. When a senator's daughter is kidnapped, the clock begins to run, and Clarice must navigate FBI politics, the asylum's self-serving director and Lecter's games to find the killer.
Harris combines procedural detail drawn from real FBI profiling methods with gothic menace and genuine psychological depth. Clarice is a determined, intelligent heroine in a male-dominated world. The novel won the Bram Stoker Award, and Jonathan Demme's 1991 film adaptation swept the five major Academy Awards, making Lecter a pop-culture icon.
Book details
| Author | Thomas Harris |
|---|---|
| First published | 1988 |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Thriller |
| Type | Fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 338 |
| Setting | Quantico, Baltimore, Memphis and the American Midwest, 1980s |
| Awards | Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel 1988 |
Themes
- Evil and intellect
- Women in male institutions
- Trauma
- Identity
- Manipulation
Who should read it
Fans of dark crime fiction who want the definitive serial-killer thriller.