Red Dragon [Mass Market Paperback]

Thomas Harris (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 6, 2009

A second family has been massacred by the terrifying serial killer the press has christened ?The Tooth Fairy.? Special Agent Jack Crawford turns to the one man who can help restart a failed investigation?Will Graham. Graham is the greatest profiler the FBI ever had, but the physical and mental scars of capturing Hannibal Lecter have caused Graham to go into early retirement. Now, Graham must turn to Lecter for help.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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 an alternate Mass Market Paperback edition.

Review

"Red Dragon is an engine designed for one purpose—to make the pulse pound, the heart palpitate, the fear glands secrete."—New York Times Book Review

"A gruesome, graphic, gripping thriller...extraordinarily harrowing." —Plain Dealer, Cleveland

"Warning! If you're subject to nightmares, don't read it!"—Colorado Springs Sun

"An unforgettable thriller."—Daily News, New York


For Black Sunday:

"Frighteningly believable."—Chicago Tribune

"Suspenseful, nightmarish."—Los Angeles Times

"Breathtaking. All forces converge with an apocalyptic bang!"—New York Times

"Fast-paced, all too realistic... with a shattering climax."—Kirkus Reviews

"A spellbinder... The race to save the Super Bowl is hair-raising, one that will keep you rooted to your chair."—Hartford Courant

For Red Dragon:

"Red Dragon is an engine designed for one purpose—to make the pulse pound, the heart palpitate, the fear glands secrete."—New York Times Book Review

"A gruesome, graphic, gripping thriller... Extraordinarily harrowing."—The Plain Dealer, Cleveland

"Want to faint with fright? Want to have your hair stand on end? Want to read an unforgettable thriller with equal parts of horror and suspense? Harris was obviously only warming up with his best seller Black Sunday."—Daily News, New York

"Irresistible... A shattering thriller... Readers should buckle themselves in for a long night's read because from the first pages... Harris grabs hold."—Publishers Weekly

"The scariest book of the season."—Washington Post Book World

"Easily the crime novel of the year."—Newsday --This text refers to an alternate Mass Market Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Berkley; Reprint edition (January 6, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425228223
• ISBN-13: 978-0425228227
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 4.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (460 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,193 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

105 of 115 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars unsettling October 13, 2000

By Orrin C. Judd VINE™ VOICE

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Harris first rocketed up the bestseller lists with his excellent terrorism thriller Black Sunday. His antihero Hannibal the Cannibal exploded into the public consciousness after Jonathan Demme's excellent movie version of Silence of the Lambs (1991) came out, with Anthony Hopkins brilliant creepy performance as Lecter. And, of course, fans and Hollywood have had an anxious 11 year wait for Harris to finally publish a sequel. But many people may not realize that Hannibal Lecter first appeared, albeit in a cameo role, in the novel Red Dragon and in Michael Mann's capable movie version, Manhunter (1986). If you've missed this book, I urge you to try it; in many ways it is Harris's best work.

FBI Special Will Graham has retired to Sugar Loaf Key, FL with his new wife Molly and her son Willie. Retired because of his nearly fatal encounter with a linoleum knife wielding Hannibal Lecter, whose capture he was responsible for, and because of the emotional troubles that have accompanied his ability to develop an almost extrasensory empathy for such killers, such that he has trouble purging their feelings from his own psyche. His peaceful idyll is disrupted when his old boss, Jack Crawford, shows up and asks for his help in catching The Tooth Fairy, a serial killer who is notorious for the tooth marks he leaves and for dicing his victims with shards of broken mirrors. Reluctantly agreeing to join the chase, Graham decides, in order to recapture the mindset that has made him so eerily effective in prior cases, to visit Hannibal Lecter in the Chesapeake State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. There the administrator, Dr. Frederick Chilton, shares an anecdote about Hannibal that demonstrates just how horrible he is:

"On the afternoon of July 8, 1976, Dr. Lecter complained of chest pain. His restraints were removed in the examining room to make it easier to give him an electrocardiogram. One of his attendants left the room to smoke, and the other turned away for a second. The nurse was very quick and strong. She managed to save one of her eyes."

"You may find this curious." He took a strip of EKG tape from a drawer and unrolled it on his desk. He traced the spiky line with his forefinger. "Here, he's resting on the examining table. Pulse seventy-two. Here, he grabs the nurse's head and pulls her down to him. Here, he is subdued by the attendant. He didn't resist, by the way, though the attendant dislocated his shoulder. Do you notice the strange thing? His pulse never got over eighty-five. Even when he tore out her tongue.

I don't think we're any closer to understanding him than the day he came in.''

After tabloid reporter Freddie Lowndes splashes this visit all over the pages of The Tattler, the killer too contacts Lecter who urges him to attack Graham. Thus begins a suspenseful, violent minuet as Graham develops increasing insight into the killer's methodology and psychoses, the killer plans his next kill (he's on a Lunar schedule) and Hannibal pulls strings from the dark background. Harris provides fascinating detail on police procedure, he writes savvily about how the FBI uses the media and the inventiveness of the crimes he dreams up is genuinely disturbing. But the most interesting part of the story is the delicate mental balance that Graham has to maintain in order to think like the killers but still remain sane. And as Graham penetrates further into the killer's mind, Harris reveals more and more background about the Tooth Fairy, Francis Dolarhyde, who it turns out was a horribly misshapen baby, abandoned by his mother and raised by a demented grandmother, early on manifesting the now classic signs of the serial murder--torturing animals and the like. This background and Will Graham's troubles dealing with the thought patterns he shares with Dolarhyde raise questions about what separates us from such men and whether there's a formula for creating such evil beings. Is it really simply a matter of psychosexual abuse of young boys and, presto chango, you've created a serial killer?

In addition to this kind of portrayal of the psychotic as victim, our effort to deal with these creatures has resulted in a sizable batch of thrillers where the serial killer is portrayed as a nearly superhuman genius. This flows from the same impulse that makes folks so willing to believe that assassinations are conspiracies. It is extremely hard, as a society, to face the fact that nondescript shlubs like David Berkowitz and Lee Harvey Oswald and Richard Speck and James Earl Ray are really capable of causing so much social disruption. Their crimes are so monumental that we want the killers to be equal in stature to the crimes. The sad truth of the matter is that these monsters are, in fact, generally hapless losers. They are not Lecterlike geniuses.

That said, Hannibal is still one of the great fictional creations of recent times, our age's version of Dracula or Frankenstein, and Harris's imaginative story makes for a great, albeit unsettling, read with more food for thought than most novels of the type.

GRADE: A

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An overlooked gem June 14, 2000

By "kungfuwaynewho"

Format:Mass Market Paperback

I read Hannibal first. That was probably a mistake, but if you did the same thing, make sure you pick up a copy of Red Dragon. This novel by Thomas Harris is the best, in my opinion, of the three "Hannibal Lecter" books. Will Graham is a profiler that is brought on the case of the Tooth Fairy, a serial murderer killing entire families. This is what makes the book so good. Even though the murders in Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal are gruesome, it isn't as though most of us really worry about a death like that. But the fear of someone breaking into your home, which is supposed to be a haven, and murdering not only you but also the people you love the most--that is a real fear that many share.

One of the great things in this book, as opposed to SotL, is how we get in the head of the killer. We learn about his childhood not in a dossier or a debriefing but from his own memories. In the end, the killer is conflicted, torn between fulfilling what he believes is his destiny and doing what he knows is right, and I was actually able to empathize with him because of the suberb characterization.

I am a stickler for research. This book is well researched. Nothing sticks out as wrong, everything advances the plot, and the subplots, like the relationship between Will and his wife Molly, only enhance the read. I guarantee you will not be able to put this book down, this is not a leisurely read. I thought the movies of Red Dragon (called Manhunter) and Silence of the Lambs were excellent, and I'm looking forward to Hannibal, but the books can't be beat.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Did Not Let Me Down! July 31, 2001

By three60roundhouse

Format:Mass Market Paperback

I have seen both Silence and Hannibal, but I have read neither. I believe in reading series boks in order, so I picked up Red Dragon two days ago. Wow!

If you only liked Silence because you loved Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter, you may be a little dissapointed. He is not really a main character, even though he is now being played up to be because of his notoriety after its predecessors.

This book is about a serial murderer who the police have jokingly dubbed "Tooth Fairy" because of the bite marks he leaves on housewives after killing their whole family. The killer knows himself as the "Red Dragon" because he feels he has the Dragon from William Blake's painting "The Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in The Sun" inside of him, helping him "Become".

Will Graham, a retired cop who captured Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter and was almost slain by him, is called upon by the FBI to help capture this mass murderer before he strikes again at the next full moon. Graham has a great memory and imagination but a bad case of recurring fear. he must overcome this fear and talk to Dr. Lecter, who may know something about The Dragon.

Lecter manages to manipulate the killer and Graham from his cell, through a tabloid called "The National Tattler". He communicates with the Dragon through codes in the personals section and manages to get the FBI into a frenzy over the ads, getting a sleezy reporter named Freddy Lounds involved in the picture.

The killer is also tormented by his past. He has a cleft palate and sound funny when speaking, causing him to slash his victims with broken mirrors from the house. He also hears the voice of his dead nasty grandmother, who had total control of the killer as a youth.

This book is not the conventional horror story. It is more a psychological thriller than a blood and gore fest. If you are looking for a good way to have nightmares for months, this book is highly recommended. Enjoy!