Eleven years now since Thomas Harris' The Silence of The Lambs and seven since Jonathan Demme's dour, Oscar-laden movie. It's seven years too in Harris' own fictional chronology since the escape from his Memphis cage of the urbane polymath and serial cannibal Dr. Hannibal Lecter. But, as the title of this new book not so subtly suggests (the promised The Morbidity of The Soul having seemingly fallen by the commercial wayside), the good doctor does still rather like to hog the limelight.

From rumour (Harris is notoriously unreachable) to publishing phenomena in a little over two months - the script reportedly arrived out of the blue at the end of March - Hannibal is the literary sibling of George Lucas' modest little space opera. And one in which, curiously, most of the rumours prove to be uncannily on the money: yes, Lecter does spend much of his time Europe; yes, one of his previous victims is baying for revenge; and yes, there are man-eating pigs. No, really.

Those coming off the back of the film and Anthony Hopkins' laughable mugging (Brian Cox, Michael Mann's Manhunter: definitive) will get the gore - literal Grand Guignol - they crave. And people - like me and, I think, you - who want it to push that bit further will just love the coda. A party bag, something for everyone.

Of course, this is a book whose reputation is built on a film. It was said the author has never seen Demme's picture, but it's hard now to imagine this new chapter without it; if nothing else, that perfect seven year gap in both film and plot greases the leads right back in. If Silence existed originally as a ridiculous but essentially realist novel, it was the film that lured it to the edge - and sequences like Lecter's escape that pushed it over. The film became operatic - from where Hannibal assumes the baton.

Clarice Starling as slipped into her early thirties with a solid but, after the Jame Gumb investigation, stymied career. Her demonic mentor has evaporated. Until, that is, a drug bust goes badly wrong and she finds herself buried beneath five corpses and ANGEL OF DEATH headlines. Headlines that reach even Lecter, holed up now in his own cultural cocoon in Florence.

Meanwhile, back, literally, on the ranch, the good doctor is sought by one of his few surviving victims, the crippled and skinned meat magnate Mason Verger, a man much given to casual cruelty, sustained only by a respirator and Martini's distilled from the frightened tears of children. Hannibal's is a dog eat dog world, motivated as much by revenge and cold cash as a sense of justice.

If the book has a flaw it's that, in freeing Lecter of his chains, Harris has rendered the cannibal somehow less dangerous. In gaol he was the predator; out here he's the prey, hunted by private citizens and public office alike. Menace has dimmed even as his choices are extended. But even so, Harris is incapable of making Lecter sympathetic, to make us care as Starling evidently does. He keeps the wisecracks to a minimum but these days the good doctor is really half Dracula, half Bond villain.

Starling, on the other hand, is vile. This "well-scrubbed hustling rube with a little taste" has been hardened by her failure, disheartened by the (convincingly depicted) sour misogyny of the FBI. She is equally unsympathetic, rude. There may be residual affection for the insane, but we don't like her very much, which, ultimately, is Harris smartest move. (Wouldn't it have been nice, though, to have seen Red Dragon's Will? He was, after all, the man who took Lecter down in the first instance.)

What makes the book, however, is Harris' refusal to rest on his laurels. He knows what his audience wants and is more than prepared to spade it out. His book has to work to towards a peak, the point at which Starling and Lecter collide, with Mason as catalyst. And there it is, in a symbolic, blood-spattered climax that has more than a touch of Carl Hiaasen about it. You won't be short changed. But fortunately Harris won’t leave it. If the bulk of Hannibal is operatic - camp operatic, even - then its coda (and I think it's fair to say a further sequel is not on the cards) is pure Gothic. Think Poe via Roger Corman and up it a notch. It's hard to believe an author with less commercial clout would have gotten away with it.

Much has been made of the quality of Harris' prose and, for popular, commercial writing, it is markedly better than it ever needs to be. (The "damp floor" of the Internet is particularly good, I think.) Would that Patricia Cornwall or John Grisham had half his skill. But don't be lured in with false promises - Harris is at the top of his game, but he's still playing in a different arena to major stylists like Jim Sallis, Daniel Woodrell or Patrick McGrath. He does, though, write staccato, cinematic action scenes better than anyone. Much of the rest, when it's not being misanthropic, is surely tongue in cheek (FBI agents called Burke and Hare, a bizarre homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey) Hannibal is less thriller, more a nasty comic romp.

As they say, if you only read one book this year then, well, this will almost certainly be it. And you could do worse, believe me. A lot lot worse.