内容（「BOOK」データベースより）
満月の夜に連続して起きた一家惨殺事件は全米を震撼させた。次の満月までに犯人を逮捕すべく、元FBIアカデミー教官のグレアムは捜査を開始する。彼は犯人像の手がかりを得ようと、以前連続殺人事件で逮捕した精神科医のレクター博士を、収容先の異常犯罪者専用の医療施設に訪ねた。犯人は次の殺害計画を練る一方でこうした動きを新聞で知り、グレアムをつけ狙い始める―究極の悪ハンニバル・レクター衝撃の初登場作。
Amazon.com
Lying on a cot in his cell with Alexandre Dumas's
Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine open on his chest, Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter makes his debut in this legendary horror novel, which is even better than its sequel,
The Silence of the Lambs. As in
Silence, the pulse-pounding suspense plot involves a hypersensitive FBI sleuth who consults psycho psychiatrist Lecter for clues to catching a killer on the loose.
The sleuth, Will Graham, actually quit the FBI after nearly getting killed by Lecter while nabbing him, but fear isn't what bugs him about crime busting. It's just too creepy to get inside a killer's twisted mind. But he comes back to stop a madman who's been butchering entire families. The FBI needs Graham's insight, and Graham needs Lecter's genius. But Lecter is a clever fiend, and he manipulates both Graham and the killer at large from his cell.
That killer, Francis Dolarhyde, works in a film lab, where he picks his victims by studying their home movies. He's obsessed with William Blake's bizarre painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun, believing there's a red dragon within him, the personification of his demonic drives. Flashbacks to Dolarhyde's terrifying childhood and superb stream-of-consciousness prose get us right there inside his head. When Dolarhyde does weird things, we understand why. We sympathize when the voice of the cruel dead grandma who raised and crazed him urges him to mayhem--she's way scarier than that old bat in Psycho. When he falls in love with a blind girl at the lab, we hope he doesn't give in to Grandma's violent advice.
This book is awesomely detailed, ingeniously plotted, judiciously gory, and fantastically imagined. If you haven't read it, you've never had the creeps. --Tim Appelo
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