By Anthony Bruno

(Continued)

advertisement

"We'll Call Him a Monster"

Lady Murasaki assumes that Hannibal's mind is a seething bouillabaisse of anger and emotion.  But Harris describes the boy's mind as a "memory palace" containing countless rooms where Hannibal stores his vast knowledge of just about everything, the result of a seemingly limitless capacity to learn.  He attends medical school where, not surprisingly, he spends a great deal of time carving up cadavers.  He buys anatomy text books and returns them to the bookstore after a week, able to digest and memorize their contents after one quick read.   Hannibal's memory palace is so intricate and exquisite, it makes the Louvre seem like a split-level on the Jersey shore.

If only Mr. Harris had given us a set of headphones with a self-guided tour for this excursion into Lecter's head, for as much as he reveals about young Hannibal, it never quite satisfies our curiosity.  The adult Hannibal is such a deliciously complex creature in the previous books, it's hard to believe that what makes him tick is simply his desire to avenge the killing of his sister.  Even though there's a choice little detail to the Mischa episode that remained locked in a broom closet in his memory palace and is jarred open only toward the end of the book, mere revenge somehow seems too common for Lecter.  Unlike his previous incarnations, young Hannibal is not eerily prescient, and he doesn't keep us guessing.  And without a Clarice Starling to menace and bewilder, we don't much care what he does to the group of flesh-eating thugs who deserve everything he dishes out.  In this book, Harris gives us a character we can neither root for nor despise.  Young Hannibal is not hero or a villain.  We just don't know what to think of him.

A dogged French police inspector named Popil has strong suspicions about Hannibal, but he lacks the evidence to slap the cuffs on the young man.  He understands Hannibal's desire to find Mischa's killers and give them their just deserts but would prefer that Hannibal let the French justice system handle the apprehension and sentencing of war criminals.  Popil says of Lecter, "The little boy Hannibal died in 1945 out there in the snow trying to save his sister.  His heart died with Mischa.  What is he now?  There's not a word for it yet.  For lack of a better word, we'll call him a monster."

Actually I'd call him a once-great series character who has run out of steam.

Next Page

Previous Page 

For more daily crime news