Rating: 
Summary: You've Seen the Film, Now Read Mr. Harris' Book
Review: Thomas Harris' book The Silence of the Lambs has been reissued with a subtler, more artistic design, displaying a moth but no screaming death's head, and in a larger size that hints at the literary heft to be found between its covers. The publishers at St. Martin's Press know what they're doing, and if they want to argue for Harris a larger place in the modern canon, I will agree: we're being asked to pay attention to Harris with more than airport-reading consideration and we will be rewarded. The Silence of the Lambs stars Clarice Starling, a student at the FBI training academy, who becomes enmeshed in a disturbing serial murder case. As the only woman in a male dominated behavioral science department, Clarice brings fresh insights to the search for mad killer Buffalo Bill. Strangely, the other person with insight into the case is locked away in a high security prison vault, sealed from the light of day-Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a madman in his own right. The two, bright-eyed, young, but worldly Clarice and human-organ-eating Lecter, make for an interesting team. But each has power in his or her way and each wants something precious from the other. Lecter wants freedom and, to some extent, Clarice's company, while Clarice needs to close in on Buffalo Bill before he maims another woman. Along the way, she may also silence some of her self-doubt and lingering need for closure with aspects of her past. Buffalo Bill is on the lose trapping, holding captive, killing, and skinning overweight twenty-something women. The fact that he believes himself to be a transvestite and is making himself a dress out of woman skin has uncertain thematic implications, but there it is. The imprisoned Lecter, who originally seems to have uncanny and brilliant insight into the mind of this lunatic, draws Clarice closer to him by lending her clues in miserly fashion. With their dangerous tango in play, Clarice shifts back into the world of the FBI and on more than one occasion is forced to deal with a sexist environment to simply do her job. Harris takes care to show us how the mind of this young trainee works systematically and deductively, qualities her male superiors can immediately appreciate, but also how she draws from her own unique experience as a woman and someone raised lower class. Driving her throughout the text is a deep sense of connection with the victims, a heightened empathy we fail to see demonstrated by the other investigators, and more importantly, with the living Catherine Martin. Buffalo Bill's latest detainee, Catherine is the daughter of a senator, and the question will be whether she and Clarice Starling can not only actively resist, but overcome the forces that move to stifle them.
Rating: 
Summary: Superb
Review: When you read "The Silence of the Lambs" or hear about the book, you probably start immediately to remember some scenes from the movie starring Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins. The movie comes pretty damn close! And it's rare that a movie follows the plot of a novel so closely. It is difficult to write something about a story that is so well known, basically by its adaptation for the screen, which has been buried under a heap of Academy Awards. Like many others, "The Silence of the Lambs" proves the fact that the book is always better than the movie. Clarice Starling is an FBI trainee. The FBI's chief of Behavioral Science has called on her to help solve a serial murder case. She must interview Dr. Hannibal ("the Cannibal") Lector, a psychiatrist jailed for killing and eating various patients, to get inside the mind of Buffalo Bill, a serial killer on the loose. Starling becomes close to Lector who helps her discover how to find Buffalo Bill, and how to find closure in her personal life. "The Silence of the Lambs" is simply a superb, electrifying book. What a writer Thomas Harris is and what a character the infamous Dr. Hannibal Lector is. With Dr. Lector, Harris makes you look at the face of evil, and stare! This book sets the standard in psychological terror. If you haven't seen the movie yet, read the novel first, then see the characters brought to life brilliantly by Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster. I thoroughly enjoyed the two principal characters Dr. Hannibal Lector and Clarice Starling. And I look forward to Hannibal. I wish more novels were like this.
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