Red Dragon

By: Thomas Harris

Narrated by: Alan Sklar

A quiet summer night...a neat suburban house...and another innocent, happy family is shattered -- the latest victims of a grisly series of hideous sacrificial killings that no one understands, and no one can stop. Nobody lives to tell of the unimaginable carnage. Only the blood-stained walls bear witness.

All hope rests on Special Agent Will Graham, who must peer inside the killer's tortured soul to understand his rage, to anticipate and prevent his next vicious crime. Desperate for help, Graham finds himself locked in a deadly alliance with the brilliant Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the infamous mass murderer who Graham put in prison years ago. As the imprisoned Lecter tightens the reins of revenge, Graham's feverish pursuit of the Red Dragon draws him inside the warped mind of a psychopath, into an unforgettable world of demonic ritual and violence, beyond the limits of human terror.

Excellent treatment of the sympathetic complexity of a murderer

I remember in my freshman year of college. I went with my boyfriend to a party, and on the bookshelf was a copy of The Silence of the Lambs. I had seen the movie any number of times but it hadn’t occurred to me that it might be based on a book. Asking to borrow it, I read. And this might have been the first time I read the source material of a popular contemporary film.
Fast forward twenty years, and multiple books about Hannibal Lecter have come and gone. Getting back into non-comic prose, I remembered enjoying Silence and looked up what else was in the series. With almost zero notion of what was before me, I set into Red Dragon.
What we have here is a crime and detective story, featuring agents of the FBI investigating the recent murders of two entire families in different parts of the country. The chief protagonist has the claim to fame of catching Hannibal Lecter. No one knows that was all but a fluke. The man is good at his job, but catching Lecter had been an accident of circumstance.
The first half of the story is almost entirely investigation and we only see the murderer through the mind of the FBI agents and their discussions with Lecter. Toward the middle, we slowly and then increasingly begin spending time with the murderer himself.
Hats off to Harris for painting such a sympathetic and pitiful portrait of the murderer. His backstory and his attempt at the first stages of romance pull at the heartstrings. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him and his inner struggle with his insanity.
The story ends with a final thrill I hadn’t expected, and I am very much looking forward to revisiting The Silence of the Lambs.

Wonderful Book

This is a really good book. The narrator is not so good. He wasn't so bad that I couldn't listen to it. But bad enough that I thought about it quite often while listening. I don't know how to describe his voice. It is like every character is whining or cajoling when speaking. Definitely sounds like an older man with a breathy voice who draws out the end of every sentence of dialog. They all sound the same. There is an obvious change in infliction between story and dialog, but no change between characters or topic of conversation.

Great story. Odd performance.

I loved the story. Very intriguing look at the mind of a murderer and the men who hunt him. I found the narrator's choices to lack the proper tone in places. His portrayal of women outright creeped me out; and not in a good way.

Great listen but sorta tame

Great book, worth the listen, great character development and read terrifically. My only complaint is that it felt like the author pulled most of punches from the climactic events. Just as you think you're about to really dig into the nitty gritty the event has passed.

Good start

the narrator was a bit weird for the female parts. he couldn't quite get fear or anger in the voice. other than that, not bad.