By Anthony Bruno

(Continued)

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Satan, Holmes, and Dracula

In Hannibal Rising Thomas Harris has made the mistake of telling us too much about Hannibal Lecter.  In the earlier books the character is so uniquely evil, readers are left wondering if he's really human.  He has the bearing of a malevolent god and yet mere mortals have been able to keep him imprisoned.  He has the profound world-weariness of Milton's Satan, the superior intellect of Sherlock Holmes, and the sophisticated blood lust of Count Dracula.  He's a tantalizing mystery who peaks our interest because we don't understand what he's all about.

His cloak of mystery is compounded in the most successful books (Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs ) by the fact that he is neither the hero nor the  villain of these novels.  He plays the role of trickster, toying with the protagonists while helping them find the principal malefactors in those stories.  In Hannibal, he takes center stage as the story's villain, and the character begins to weaken.  Lecter has wants and desires, and so he starts to become human.  He's much more interesting when he leaves us guessing. 
But I can't chastise Mr. Harris too harshly for giving us a less-than-thrilling ride this time around.  Series characters-whether they're private eyes, police detectives, amateur sleuths, or bad guys with good intentions-eventually get stale.  After a successful debut and a few good sequels, the weary author has to figure out how to keep the series fresh.  Killing off the character or retiring him are not viable options for a creation as popular as Lecter, so the typical and often predictable solution is to write a prequel.  Now that Mr. Harris has taken us down that road, hopefully we won't have to go back.

Having taken the tour of Hannibal Lecter's memory palace, all I can do is shrug and say, "Eh."  Next time out, Mr. Harris, please give us a good story with a hero, a villain, and Dr. Lecter watching over the blundering efforts of lesser mortals, like the Prince of Darkness that we all want him to be.

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