A review by dieslaughing
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris

4.0

This was a surprise. Having watched every single screen adaptation of Harris's novels, I never once felt compelled to visit the source material - until I got hooked on NBC's Hannibal TV series. I can't speak on the other Hannibal Lecter novels but when it comes to Red Dragon, that was completely my loss. What a taut, yet surprisingly poetic and surreal, read this is. I'm not entirely certain what I was expecting but it's a testament to Harris that even after watching Manhunter, Red Dragon, and Hannibal, I was still caught up in the story and dreading the fallout with every page I turned. And the words themselves are quite sensuous in places; I expected terse, hard-boiled prose, and this deftly skirts around the edges of purple, even as it's filling your head with horrific imagery.