Red Dragon

Back cover: Sexual hunger; demonic violence; sinister logic - the lethal components of a deadly formula driving a psychopath in the grip of an unimaginable delusion. He is a boastful killer who sends the police tormenting notes. A tortured, torturing monster who finds ultimate pleasure in viciously murdering happy families. And he calls himself. . . The Red Dragon.

"Will Graham sat Crawford down at a picnic table between the house and the ocean and gave him a glass of iced tea."

Confession: I'd seen the film before I read the book, dun dun dun. It stands up to it pretty well. Of course, the crime scenes were much more 'viewable' on screen than on the page, but this way you got the experience funneled through Graham's lense. You weren't just witnessing a bloody crime scene, you were being shown details and then spying on his analysis of them, working out what the blood spatter meant, the narrative behind the image. You also felt Graham's reluctance to be doing this job, dragged back into wading through the mind of a predator because he is blessed and cursed with the ability to do so. And there was some plain good writing scattered throughout. Example: . . . blood like the legs of spectacles over her temples and ears. Is that not a great simile and visual? There were some great character descriptions too; Harris did the few identifying traits well, making the characters instantly memorable without having a quirky cast with eyepatches and limps. Example: He had buck teeth and his rat eyes had the sheen of spit on asphalt. Nice, yes? The third person omniscient POV was also done well so we got to see the inside of people's heads without being confused about just whose thoughts we were being privy to.

I liked the balance between Graham and the murderer's chapters. Now that I think about it, since the main crimes being solved are ones that take place before the book begins, without seeing the antagonist's chapters and his preparations for the next crime the book could have been a lot less tense. This way, you have the ticking clock element that Graham and the FBI know about and then you have what the readers know: that the antagonist is getting smarter and he's hunting for his next victims. He may not be committing any crimes (well, actually, he is, but not ones that the FBI knows about), but the man sure keeps busy. Just as important, we get inside the murderer's head, the very thing Graham is trying to do, and the thing he loathes. And what we discover is that, well, he has some redeemable qualities. Really. We find out about his messed up past -- of course -- and toward the end there's the glimmer of a desire to change, to stop. There's some humanity in him still, despite the horrific crimes and the glaring mental issues that incapacitate his ability to lead a normal life.

I will add, I liked how the movie slightly altered the ending. It's the kind of thing I could see Harris wishing he'd thought of, or had his agent/editor suggest to him. At least, that's how I would have felt. Without being spoilery (and argh, it is so difficult) the addition to the movie ending allowed Graham to have a more active role in taking down the murderer as well as utilising the antagonist's Dickensian origins. But c'est la vie. The book still stood up to the movie, and the movie had Edward Norton.