HANNIBAL LECTER SERIES [RED DRAGON, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, HANNIBAL, HANNIBAL RISING] [4 Volumes] [All Volumes Signed]

Harris, Thomas

ISBN 10: 039912442X / ISBN 13: 9780399124426

Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons/ St. Martin's Press/ Delacorte Press 1981 - 2006, New York, NY, 1981

About this Item

Octavo, 4 Volumes. In Near Fine condition with Very Good to Near Fine condition dust jacket. Volume 1 has a scarlet red spine with age-toned yellow-white lettering. Volume 2 has a black spine with white lettering. Volumes 3 and 4 have black spines gilted lettering. Dust jackets are wrapped in protective mylar coverings, Volume 1 has staining on the front mylar cover and moderate age-toning along the rear cover and flaps, and Volume 2 has wrinkling on the rear cover fore tail corner. Boards of Volume 1 have mild wear along the head and tail edges, mild wear along the spine head edge, and mild age-toning along the head edges. Signed flat by Thomas Harris on title pages of all Volumes. Volume 1 contains a loose business card from "Felix Albert" between the front end-page and pastedown. Volume 4 contains a letter to the previous owner with a white stamp sticker adhesively attached to it. CONTENTS: Vol. 1, "Red Dragon", 348 pages - Vol. 2, "The Silence of the Lambs", 338 pages - Vol. 3, "Hannibal", 486 pages - Vol. 4, "Hannibal Rising", 323 pages. JW consignment. Shelved in Case 5. Thomas Harris was born on September 22, 1940 in Jackson, Tennessee, moving to Rich, Mississippi as a young child. Harris would graduate college in 1964, becoming a reporter for the local newspaper in Waco, Texas where he covered the police beat. Harris would move to New York City in 1968, and left his job there at the Associated Press to begin work on his debut novel "Black Sunday". After "Black Sunday"s moderate success, Harris would begin work on his second novel; "Red Dragon". Research for this novel lasted throughout the 1970's during which Harris attended classes and spoke with agents of the FBI Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico, Virginia. When his father became terminally ill, Harris remained in a rural house for 18 months which helped him visualize his killer characters. "Red Dragon" would be the first depiction of the infamous Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the serial killer psychologist, who would become a mainstay in many of Harris' books, tying them together. "Red Dragon" saw much more success than "Black Sunday", Stephen King naming it the "best popular novel to be published in America since The Godfather". It's critical success would inspire a sequel in 1988, "Silence of the Lambs" "Silence of the Lambs" is by far Harris' most successful novel and best known installment in the series, selling over 10 million copies and spawing one of the great American horror films, which earned "the Big Five" Academy Awards in 1991. While "Red Dragon" followed a hardened FBI investigator, "Silence of the Lambs" follows trainee Clarice Starling as she pursues the serial killer "Buffalo Bill" who turns to Dr. Hannibal Lecter for help in the case. "Hannibal" would release to success, spawning a film adaptation in 2001 and was initially intended to be the final entry in the series. However, Harris would release a prequel to the series, "Hannibal Rising", which depicts Lecter's origins. This final novel would release to middling reviews, and it was later revealed that Harris wrote the novel under duress as he was threatened with losing the rights to Hannibal Lecter as a character if he didn't. 1385094. Shelved Dupont Bookstore.

Seller Inventory # 1385094

Bibliographic Details

• Title: HANNIBAL LECTER SERIES [RED DRAGON, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, HANNIBAL, HANNIBAL RISING] [4 Volumes] [All Volumes Signed]
• Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons/ St. Martin's Press/ Delacorte Press 1981 - 2006, New York, NY
• Publication Date: 1981
• ISBN 10: 039912442X
• ISBN 13: 9780399124426
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition, First Printing.
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Dupont Circle
  • Literature

About this title

Synopsis

Will Graham's unusual, fearful ability to project himself into the minds of psychopaths puts him on the trail of Francis Dolorhyde, whose bizarre and bloody murders of two suburban families have been triggered by his viewing of a William Blake watercolor

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