What is there not to like about an evil genius with a taste for human sweetbreads and absolutely no morning-after guilt, or indigestion, about slaking his hunger? Particularly, it must be added, when such a monster is securely incarcerated in the dank basement of a Baltimore, Md., mental institution for the rest of his life.
Hence the eerie popular appeal of Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a.k.a. Hannibal the Cannibal, who made his first, cameo appearance in Thomas Harris' vivid thriller Red Dragon (1981) and then assumed a more sustained role in the author's The Silence of the Lambs (1988). Anthony Hopkins' 1991 Oscar-winning portrayal of Dr. Lecter in the film adaptation of Silence gave the fictional character an iconic image: cold blue eyes in a face tightly restrained by a muzzle designed to prevent impulsive nipping of nearby humans.
Lecter, of course, escaped captivity near the end of Silence, novel and film, which was not good news for one of the fictional folks who had mistreated him when he was helpless. Another unfortunate consequence of Lecter at large became clear last week, when more than 1 1/2 million copies of Harris' Hannibal (Delacorte; 486 pages; $27.95) hit the display shelves in U.S. bookstores.
Having created a character of unadulterated evil, Harris has now proceeded to adulterate him, giving Lecter a traumatic childhood experience to explain the wicked path he later trod. What is more, Lecter is by no means the worst member of the roiling cast of Hannibal; that honor goes to Mason Verger, one of Lecter's two surviving victims, hideously deformed (thanks to Hannibal), heir to his family's meatpacking fortune, a onetime torturer for Uganda's former dictator Idi Amin, and a child molester to boot.
Verger has posted a $1 million reward for Lecter's capture and, under the table, offered a $3 million bounty to anyone who can bring Lecter to him alive, ahead of the FBI agents, including Clarice Starling (played by Oscar-winning Jodie Foster in the Silence film), who hope to get the doctor back in custody. Verger wants to watch and enjoy as a specially trained herd of swine slowly eat Lecter alive.
As may be apparent by now, a reader's rooting interest in Hannibal is sorely conflicted. Sure, Lecter did some hideous things, but do we really want to see him tortured to death by that creep Verger? For long, long stretches in the middle of the novel, Harris himself seems to be of two minds on that very question. Employing his virtuosity as an orchestrator of suspense, the author puts Lecter, his facial appearance altered by collagen injections, in Florence, Italy, speaking impeccable Italian and lecturing to scholars on the works of Dante. Verger's network of spies has spotted Lecter there and set a trap that he cannot possibly escape. Guess what happens.
So then it's back to Maryland, where Lecter rents a lavish house not terribly far from the modest duplex of FBI special agent Starling, his antagonist/confidant during the period seven years earlier, covered in Silence. Verger's people know that Lecter, for complex reasons buried in his own psychoses, wants either to kill Starling or to protect her or, possibly, madman that he is, to protect her by killing her, and they hit upon a way to use her as bait to draw him to his presumed doom.