After listening to the Silence of the Lambs audiobook and enjoying it, Lizzie and I decided to listen to Red Dragon together. Of course, the covers that have come out since the mid-90s all have "THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF HANNIBAL LECTOR" splashed across the front, but it's interesting how minimal Lector's role is in this one. Of course, even in Silence of the Lambs Lector is sort of a secondary character, set apart from the main action of the plot- it's impressive the impact he has had on pop culture despite not being the central villain of his most popular works. ANYHOO I had some blurry memories of the film adaptation of this one (starring my then-hero Edward Norton), but the book still packed plenty of surprises and was a blast. Honestly I find it to be just as engaging as SotL, with an impressively creepy serial killer and plenty of thoughtful psychological-detective work at play. It's also fun to engage with characters like Jack Crawford and Frederick Chilton- so familiar from SotL. Will Graham is not quite Clarise Starling, but still plenty good. Lizzie and I have now started the Mads Mikkelson Hannibal show, so we're on a true kick! We also watched "Red Dragon" the movie which mostly held up- it's just too bad it was directed by Brett Ratner.
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