HYdraMStar
Number of posts : 1170 Age : 45 Location : Charlotte, NC Current Mood : Registration date : 2008-07-20
| Subject: “Red Dragon” by Thomas Harris September 27th 2009, 10:31 pm | |
| I got a free with purchase dog-eared paperback copy of Thomas Harris’ “Red Dragon” awhile back down at the local used bookstore. I’d read “Silence of the Lambs”, which is the sequel to “Red Dragon”, years ago. I think I was around twelve or thirteen at the time. As best I can remember I liked it a lot. I was a bit of a morbid one even then.
So, I decided to round out my light summer reading list with “Red Dragon”, figuring the book that first brought the character Hannibal Lecter, or Hannibal the Cannibal, one of my all time favorite movie characters, to life just couldn’t be bad… Boy, was I wrong.
Lecter is the only good thing about this book. He’s just not in it nearly enough. He’s almost a throw away character, only mildly important to the plot. The fact that Harris revisited him and built the rest of the series around him is sheer genius and perhaps a sign of insight on his part into the weakness of Red Dragon’s other characters.
On the side of “good” is Will Graham, the retired investigator who’s brought in to hunt the Fairy, has a history with Lecter. He brought him down and nearly died at his hand, but he’s also an empath, of sorts, which apparently makes him very, very special. He is married to Molly, who’s first husband was a baseball player and who’s son oddly enough is named Willy. There is much said about Molly, her late husband, and former in-laws. None of it is important to the story.
Then there is the Tooth Fairy/Red Dragon character. He is a cliché built upon a cliché, a deformed child who’s abandoned by his mother and mentally abused by his grandmother who grows up to be a necrophilia and a serial killer. His target, families that remember him of his mother, step-father, and step-siblings. Oh, and did I mention his new girlfriend is blind? So, she can’t see how ugly he is. But can her love and acceptance of him keep him from continuing to kill? No, really. That’s the plot line of the book.
My advice, and I can’t believe I’m about to say this, see the movies and skip the book. Sure, the films are filled with some of the same clichés, but they’re more entertaining… and shorter. | |
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