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The Silence of the Lambs
Thomas Harris
Heinemann, hardback, 295 pages, £10.95
Review by Gerald Houghton (1989)

After all the years he has spent as a novelist, Harris has only three published works to his name. Reading this, it’s immediately clear why. Harris has no need to prove himself to us.

Buffalo Bill, serial killer, is kidnapping overweight young women and flaying them before dumping their corpses in rivers. Clarice Starling is a trainee F.B.I. agent who is assigned by superior Jack Crawford to interview the brilliant psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lector for his insights into the case. The only problem is that Lector is nicknamed the Cannibal, thanks to his vicious homicidal tendencies. Consequently he’s kept in a secure hospital for the criminally insane while he serves his nine life sentences. Before long, Starling is playing complex mind games against the clock to unlock the identity of the killer from Lector’s mind, while the good Doctor has plans of his own . . .

In Harris’ world, words are never wasted. The plot moves at a lightning pace, complex police procedures become riveting, and Lector is at once compulsive and repellent. Harris’ novels read like they’ve been written with the aid of scalpels and an acute eye for detail. So finely-tuned that they are among those rare works that can rightfully be termed unputdownable. 

In some ways, The Silence of the Lambs is a sequel to Harris’ previous novel, 1981’s Red Dragon (filmed by Michael Mann as the breathtaking Manhunter), and like that masterpiece this novel is quite simply one of the most extraordinary thrillers you will ever read; as good as it gets.