Silence of the lambs

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The Story:

In this book we meet Clarice Starling, a student at the FBI academy in Virginia. She wants to get in to behavior science, the part of FBI that maps and seeks out psychopaths.

Clarice is a very intellegent woman that is determined to make it in the FBI. She studies hard and is in the top five of her class. Her ambition to do more with her life then her father who was a security guard pushes her in her quest to become an agent for the FBI. One of her more distinctive attributes is that she can´t take no for an answer.

There have been a series of killing involving young women in the last couple of month. The killer takes pieces of skin from his victims and is there for nicknamed "Buffalo Bill". To get more background information on who the killer is. Jack Crawford, the head of behavior science, wants Clarice to go interrogate Hannibal Lecter the most renowned sociopath in the world. Lecter, who is a former psychologist, see her coming from a mile away and is at first reluctant to talk to her. But he will provide information about the killer for personal information about her, something he calls "Quid pro quo" you tell me, I tell you. She agrees to this and he gives her information of where she can find clues to who Buffalo Bill is. Then a senator’s daughter becomes one of the victims and this intensifies the chase. The senator uses her influence to hurry the investigation on. One of the clues that Lecter gave starling leads her back to the first victim in Columbus, Cleveland.


My opinions:

I won´t revile the ending of the book, but I can say that the book is very interesting and well written. Thomas Harris is an exceptionally good author that keeps you glued to the pages as it unfolds. His writing almost make you feel like you know the characters personally and it´s hard to stop reading. Lecters psychocharacter seems so real that you might be afraid to put out the light if you get scared easily. You can see that he has done his research and knows what he is writing about. It can´t be easy to portray a sociopath like he has done in Lecter.
The questions that I got while reading this book was where Harris got his information from, and how he was able to write about something this awful. I can only guess his methods and motivation. I think his motivation to write was his curiosity for phochopaths. This how ever turned out to become a three book series that centers on one person -Lecter.


Starling is also portrayed in a fabulous way with her sharp eyes that see things that a normal person would overlook and her feelings about her father that she has difficulty dealing with.

And to capture persons, in the way Harris has done, is what make an author great. I think this is a good book if you like thrillers full of excitement and suspense. If so you can look forward to many long hours of reading. And I´m very fascinated by Thomas Harris´dedication to the characters and his passon to write a great book, and I think he has written one of the best books in modern history. This is a classical psychologic –thriller book that people can read for generations, You won´t get tired of it and it won´t get “out of date”.
It´an very tangible book, and it is not only about a serialkiller and a FBI agents chase after him, it´s also about how the human works in difficult situations and it´s about the human behavior. I think the book has more dept into it than just to entertain the reader for the moment with a scary story.
It is not a typical scary book because it dosn´t have so much blood and dead people (ofcourse some victims) but Harris story does not revolve around them, he focus on the psychological part and plays with the readers mind and own fantasy.

The language was not easy but it wasn´t so hard either, I had to concentrate a bit to understand but I didn´t need a dictonary. What I really liked about Harris´writing was his hidden messages and that you have to use your own fantasy quite much. His sneaky way of discribing things ar great and you´ll never get bored of the book.

The portraits of Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lector are fantastic. Hannibals creepy and intelligent personality are really accentuated and the you can´t make up your mind if you love or hate him. And Clarice´s persona is captured in a fabulous way and she is a very impressing woman.

The only thing that I didn´t like abuot the book was it´s length. I actually think that if harris would have skipped some things and, to me, unnecessary discriptions and things like that it would be a bit better. But that are just trifles compared to the whole book itself.

For the first time I don´t think that the book is better then the film, it´s not worse. They´re equal. It´s rare that I think so because I always find it quite innoying knowing if the film dosen´t follow the book or if the director has done some kind of mistake or error in the movie. They have different effects on me, even though it is the same story. By watchi...