Red Dragon-Thomas Harris

Title: Red Dragon

 Author: Thomas Harris

Series: Hannibal Lecter #1

Published: 1981, my edition May 1990  

Length: 454 pages 

Warnings: Everything. Gore. Sex. Not for little ones. 

Source: bought

Other info: There's lots of films and spinoffs of this series. You probably know  The Silence of the Lambs. There's also Hannibal and Hannibal Rising. 

Summary :Will Graham stands in a silent, empty house communing with a killer. An FBI instructor with a gift for hunting madmen, Graham knows what his murderer looks like, how he thinks, and what he did to his victims after they died. Now Graham must try to catch him. But to do it, he must feel the heat of a killer's brain, draw on the macabre advice of a dangerous mental patient, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, and follow a trail of microscopic clues to the place where another family has already been chosen to die--and where an innocent woman has found the Dragon first.

Review: There's a killer on the loose  and Will Graham, FBI man who's good at profiling  mad people, as well as visualizing the murder, must find him. Wouldn't be so bad if last time he'd gone on a madman hunt, he'd almost been killed by Hannibal Lecter, and wanted to retire. But seeing as this guy is killing a lot of people, and

I read this because I  watched Hannibal and quite enjoyed it, and, as always with book to screen adaptations, I try and read the source material.

I like that this book is very plot focused, as opposed to the TV show (which I know is very very different because that's a prequel and Red Dragon hasn't happened yet and is a TV show and totally different) which is very character focused. I like the plot focus, especially by the end, when the plot really gets along quickly,  which is nice, especially when the start is slower.

you feel for the characters. Well, Will Graham and the killer. Guy had an awful back story.  Will Graham, you feel bad for because of the whole empathizing wholly with killers driving him insane,  and I liked him, though  I'm not sure how much Hugh Dancy looking like a kicked puppy influenced that. Hannibal Lecter, despite being the guy the series is named after, doesn't appear much in Red Dragon, but what we see of him is intriguing.

The psychology aspect is interesting to start with, but after a little while, you do want it to just speed up a bit.  Some parts of this were creepy, in both good ways and  bad ways.

 Overall:  Strength 3 tea to a good mystery thriller horror thing, that wasn't quite I was expecting.

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