Product Description

There's a killer on the loose who knows that beauty is only skin deep, and a trainee investigator who's trying to save her own hide. The only man who can help is locked in an asylum. But he's willing to put a brave face on - if it will help him escape.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12355 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 421 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris, is even better than the successful movie. Like his earlier Red Dragon, the book takes us inside the world of professional criminal investigation. All the elements of a well-executed thriller are working here--driving suspense, compelling characters, inside information, publicity-hungry bureaucrats thwarting the search, and the clock ticking relentlessly down toward the death of another young woman. What enriches this well-told tale is the opportunity to live inside the minds of both the crime fighters and the criminals as each struggles in a prison of pain and seeks, sometimes violently, relief.

Clarice Starling, a precociously self-disciplined FBI trainee, is dispatched by her boss, Section Chief Jack Crawford, the FBI's most successful tracker of serial killers, to see whether she can learn anything useful from Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Lecter's a gifted psychopath whose nickname is "The Cannibal" because he likes to eat parts of his victims. Isolated by his crimes from all physical contact with the human race, he plays an enigmatic game of "Clue" with Starling, providing her with snippets of data that, if she is smart enough, will lead her to the criminal. Undaunted, she goes where the data takes her. As the tension mounts and the bureaucracy thwarts Starling at every turn, Crawford tells her, "Keep the information and freeze the feelings." Insulted, betrayed, and humiliated, Starling struggles to focus. If she can understand Lecter's final, ambiguous scrawl, she can find the killer. But can she figure it out in time? --Barbara Schlieper

Clive Barker
‘Thrillers don’t come any better than this… razor-sharp entertainment, beautifully constructed and brilliantly written’

Roald Dahl
‘The best book I’ve read in a very long time… subtle, horrific and splendid’

Customer Reviews

Very well written and thoroughly enjoyable
I had unfortunately seen the film before I read this book and I was angry with myself as I did imagine the characters as Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins. But aside from that, I really enjoyed this book. I knew the storyline but the book goes into so much more detail. I found myself being surprised that the film did not contain some of the detail of the book. Thomas Harris is so easy to read and I read the book very quickly. The scenes with Buffalo Bill are so disturbing; you can imagine the situations all too easily. The conversations between Clarice and Hannibal were fantastic and I could feel the emotion in the words. Very well written and thoroughly enjoyable. I'm now reading Hannibal.

Perfection is possible


Is Hannibal not at heart, a Nietzschean academic, solely interested in his intellectual pursuits? "Ecce homo" and Nietzche's later work prefigures much of Hannibal's superiority complex. He sees himself as beyond good and evil.
What does he covet? We see in "Hannibal"... the academic position in Florence... This is his ideal life. Is he not just a deep thinker who has acquired the twin bad habits (addictions?) of rage and eating the victims of his anger?

A faultless thriller (and much better than later Hannibal eposides)
If you're looking for what may be the best-ever, scary yet compelling page-turner written in modern times then this may well be it.
The film was a roaring success in part because of excellent actors and direction -- but it was based upon a superb thriller to start with and the novel is always worth reading and re-reading.
The characters of Clarice and Lecter are superbly well developed, and the torment and fear of the victims is so infectious that I zoomed through the pages -- couldn't put it down until I hit the conclusion.

This is the book which started a whole genre of fiction, an entire new kind of antihero character. (There's a rumour that the Scully character in the X-Files was loosely based around Clarice... and here is where you get your first glimpse of the forensic situations which have made CSI such a success).
And while Red Dragon is also an excellent, it doesn't hit the ferocious intensity of Lambs... while later episodes of the Lecter story make him too likeable and nowhere near as fascinating as the threatening monster who looms large in Starling's life.

A great read, whether you have tried the film or other Harris novels or not. This is the one not to miss!