内容（「BOOK」データベースより）
ウィリアム・ブレイクの描く「大いなる赤き竜」に自らを重ねて残忍な犯行に及ぶ男、ダラハイド。新聞記者を生贄にして不敵な挑戦状を叩きつける彼とそれを操ろうと企むレクター博士に、グレアムらは翻弄される。だが一人の盲目の女性との出会いを機に、ダラハイドの自我は二つに分裂を始めた―殺人鬼の心の奥底の闇を抉り出すサイコ・サスペンスの最高傑作。ハンニバル誕生秘話を記す著者序文を付した決定版ついに登場。
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
--This text refers to the
ハードカバー
edition.
