It is a pleasure to reply in the negative. The readers who have been waiting for “Hannibal” only want to know if it is as good as “Red Dragon” and “The Silence of the Lambs” (we can exclude Harris’s other novel, a terrorist thriller called “Black Sunday,” from this discussion it seems to have been written before the author himself clearly understood what he was up to).

Harris is not for all these people, of course - I don’t think many of the Danielle Steel crowd will be rushing out to buy a book in which one character is eaten from the inside out by a ravenous moray eel - but for those who like what Harris can do so brilliantly, no book report is required. In a culture where a handful of popular novelists pump out a book or two a year, producing them like hormone-juiced hens laying eggs, Harris’s rare appearances in the marketplace make him a singularity: a novelist whose work can be grasped entire not just by English department profs and tenure-bound grad students but by the humble folk who entertain themselves with novels on airplanes and in overcrowded waiting rooms. Most of Harris’s devotees have read his entire oeuvre, and why not? Until now it consisted of only three novels. agent (“cornpone, but with a little taste”), and Hannibal Lecter, the great fictional monster of our time. Surely that would suffice for Thomas Harris’s fans, who have waited 11 years for the rematch between Clarice Starling, intrepid F.B.I. The worst thing I could do is summarize this novel in any detail, and were I the book’s editor, I would argue very strongly for flap copy consisting of only three words: And what is true of gourmet meals and cannibal feasts is equally true of the suspense novel: Knowing too much beforehand spoils the surprise. Lecter - known in some quarters as Hannibal the Cannibal - raises his finger to his lips. Her companion is casual but elegant in his dark trousers, white shirt and ascot. A woman enters, dressed in a long dinner gown of cream silk and wearing emerald earrings.

In the dining room, there are flowers and candlelight and harpsichord music - “If Love Now Reigned,” composed by Henry VIII in 1510. HANNIBAL by Thomas Harris | Review first published June 13, 1999

Thomas harris hannibal books