Red Dragon - Softcover

Harris, Thomas

4.06

332,959 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099441381 ISBN 13: 9780099441380

Publisher: Gardners Books, 2002

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Sexual hunger; demonic violence; sinister logic - the lethal components of a deadly formula driving a psychopath in the grip of an unimaginable delusion; a boastful killer who sends the police tormenting notes; a tortured, torturing monster who finds ultimate pleasure in viciously murdering happy families, and calls himself... The Red Dragon. Special agent Will Graham had been assigned to similar cases before, cases where he was able to see and feel with the madmen, anticipate their moves and, most terrifying of all, be vulnerable to their horrifying brutality. Now Graham is reluctantly lured out of retirement, to find an opening to the evil mind of the Red Dragon. Red Dragon is quite probably the most suspenseful, utterly compelling thriller ever written.

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Review:

Lying on a cot in his cell with Alexandre Dumas's Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine open on his chest, Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter makes his debut in this legendary horror novel, which is even better than its sequel, The Silence of the Lambs. As in Silence, the pulse-pounding suspense plot involves a hypersensitive FBI sleuth who consults psycho psychiatrist Lecter for clues to catching a killer on the loose.

The sleuth, Will Graham, actually quit the FBI after nearly getting killed by Lecter while nabbing him, but fear isn't what bugs him about crime busting. It's just too creepy to get inside a killer's twisted mind. But he comes back to stop a madman who's been butchering entire families. The FBI needs Graham's insight, and Graham needs Lecter's genius. But Lecter is a clever fiend, and he manipulates both Graham and the killer at large from his cell.

That killer, Francis Dolarhyde, works in a film lab, where he picks his victims by studying their home movies. He's obsessed with William Blake's bizarre painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun, believing there's a red dragon within him, the personification of his demonic drives. Flashbacks to Dolarhyde's terrifying childhood and superb stream-of-consciousness prose get us right there inside his head. When Dolarhyde does weird things, we understand why. We sympathize when the voice of the cruel dead grandma who raised and crazed him urges him to mayhem--she's way scarier than that old bat in Psycho. When he falls in love with a blind girl at the lab, we hope he doesn't give in to Grandma's violent advice.

This book is awesomely detailed, ingeniously plotted, judiciously gory, and fantastically imagined. If you haven't read it, you've never had the creeps. --Tim Appelo

From the Back Cover:

"Red Dragon is an engine designed for one purpose--to make the pulse pound, the heart palpitate, the fear glands secrete."
--The New York Times Book Review

"A gruesome, graphic, gripping thriller...extraordinarily harrowing."
--The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

"Warning! If you're subject to nightmares, don't read it!"
--Colorado Springs Sun

"An unforgettable thriller."
--Daily News (New York)

For Black Sunday:

"Frighteningly believable."
--Chicago Tribune

"Suspenseful, nightmarish."
--Los Angeles Times

"Breathtaking. All forces converge with an apocalyptic bang!"
--The New York Times

"Fast-paced, all too realistic... with a shattering climax."
--Kirkus Reviews

"A spellbinder... The race to save the Super Bowl is hair-raising, one that will keep you rooted to your chair."
--The Hartford Courant

For Red Dragon:

"Red Dragon is an engine designed for one purpose--to make the pulse pound, the heart palpitate, the fear glands secrete."
--The New York Times Book Review

"A gruesome, graphic, gripping thriller... Extraordinarily harrowing."
--The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

"Want to faint with fright? Want to have your hair stand on end? Want to read an unforgettable thriller with equal parts of horror and suspense? Harris was obviously only warming up with his best seller Black Sunday."
--Daily News (New York)

"Irresistible... A shattering thriller... Readers should buckle themselves in for a long night's read because from the first pages... Harris grabs hold."
--Publishers Weekly

"The scariest book of the season."
--The Washington Post Book World

"Easily the crime novel of the year."
--Newsday --