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The Silence of the Lambs (Hannibal Lecter) Mass Market Paperback – February 15, 1991

by Thomas Harris (Author)

4.7 9,661 ratings

Book 2 of 4: Hannibal Lecter

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An ingenious, masterfully written novel, Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs is a classic of suspense and storytelling and the basis for the Oscar award-winning horror film starring Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling and Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

A serial murderer known only by a grotesquely apt nickname―Buffalo Bill―is stalking particular women. He has a purpose, but no one can fathom it, for the bodies are discovered in different states. Clarice Starling, a young trainee at the F.B.I. Academy, is surprised to be summoned by Jack Crawford, Chief of the Bureau's Behavioral Science section. Her assignment: to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist and grisly killer now kept under close watch in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Lecter's insight into the minds of murderers could help track and capture Buffalo Bill.

Smart and attractive, Starling is shaken to find herself in a strange, intense relationship with the acutely perceptive Lecter. His cryptic clues―about Buffalo Bill and about her―launch Clarice on a search that every reader will find startling, harrowing, and totally compelling.

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Over this odd world, this half the world that’s dark now, I have to hunt a thing that lives on tears.
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Problem-solving is hunting; it is savage pleasure and we are born to it.
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It was as though committing murders had purged him of lesser rudeness.
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris, is even better than the successful movie. Like his earlier Red Dragon, the book takes us inside the world of professional criminal investigation. All the elements of a well-executed thriller are working here--driving suspense, compelling characters, inside information, publicity-hungry bureaucrats thwarting the search, and the clock ticking relentlessly down toward the death of another young woman. What enriches this well-told tale is the opportunity to live inside the minds of both the crime fighters and the criminals as each struggles in a prison of pain and seeks, sometimes violently, relief.

Clarice Starling, a precociously self-disciplined FBI trainee, is dispatched by her boss, Section Chief Jack Crawford, the FBI's most successful tracker of serial killers, to see whether she can learn anything useful from Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Lecter's a gifted psychopath whose nickname is "The Cannibal" because he likes to eat parts of his victims. Isolated by his crimes from all physical contact with the human race, he plays an enigmatic game of "Clue" with Starling, providing her with snippets of data that, if she is smart enough, will lead her to the criminal. Undaunted, she goes where the data takes her. As the tension mounts and the bureaucracy thwarts Starling at every turn, Crawford tells her, "Keep the information and freeze the feelings." Insulted, betrayed, and humiliated, Starling struggles to focus. If she can understand Lecter's final, ambiguous scrawl, she can find the killer. But can she figure it out in time? --Barbara Schlieper

Review

“Razor-sharp entertainment, beautifully constructed and brilliantly written. Thrillers don't come any better than this.” ―Clive Barker

“A virtual textbook on the craft of suspense, a masterwork of sheer momentum that rockets seamlessly toward its climax... Harris is quite simply the best suspense novelist working today.” ―The Washington Post

“A psychological thriller so deftly woven and gripping that a reader can hardly get through one sentence fast enough to discover what's in the next.” ―Associated Press

About the Author

Thomas Harris is the author of best-selling novels including The Silence of the Lambs, Black Sunday, Red Dragon, Hannibal and Hannibal Rising.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 1

Behavioral Science, the FBI section that deals with serial murder, is on the bottom floor of the Academy building at Quantico, half-buried in the earth. Clarice Starling reached it flushed after a fast walk from Hogan’s Alley on the firing range. She had grass in her hair and grass stains on her FBI Academy windbreaker from diving to the ground under fire in an arrest problem on the range.
No one was in the outer office, so she fluffed briefly by her reflection in the glass doors. She knew she could look all right without primping. Her hands smelled of gunsmoke, but there was no time to wash—Section Chief Crawford’s summons had saidnow.
She found Jack Crawford alone in the cluttered suite of offices. He was standing at someone else’s desk talking on the telephone and she had a chance to look him over for the first time in a year. What she saw disturbed her.
Normally, Crawford looked like a fit, middle-aged engineer who might have paid his way through college playing baseball—a crafty catcher, tough when he blocked the plate. Now he was thin, his shirt collar was too big, and he had dark puffs under his reddened eyes. Everyone who could read the papers knew Behavioral Science section was catching hell. Starling hoped Crawford wasn’t on the juice. That seemed most unlikely here.
Crawford ended his telephone conversation with a sharp “No.” He took her file from under his arm and opened it.
“Starling, Clarice M., good morning,” he said.
“Hello.” Her smile was only polite.
“Nothing’s wrong. I hope the call didn’t spook you.”
“No.” Not totally true, Starling thought.
“Your instructors tell me you’re doing well, top quarter of the class.”
“I hope so, they haven’t posted anything.”
“I ask them from time to time.”
That surprised Starling; she had written Crawford off as a two-faced recruiting sergeant son of a bitch.
She had met Special Agent Crawford when he was a guest lecturer at the University of Virginia. The quality of his criminology seminars was a factor in her coming to the Bureau. She wrote him a note when she qualified for the Academy, but he never replied, and for the three months she had been a trainee at Quantico, he had ignored her.
Starling came from people who do not ask for favors or press for friendship, but she was puzzled and regretful at Crawford’s behavior. Now, in his presence, she liked him again, she was sorry to note.
Clearly something was wrong with him. There was a peculiar cleverness in Crawford, aside from his intelligence, and Starling had first noticed it in his color sense and the textures of his clothing, even within the FBI-clone standards of agent dress. Now he was neat but drab, as though he were molting.
“A job came up and I thought about you,” he said. “It’s not really a job, it’s more of an interesting errand. Push Berry’s stuff off that chair and sit down. You put down here that you want to come directly to Behavioral Science when you get through with the Academy.”
“I do.”
“You have a lot of forensics, but no law enforcement background. We look for six years, minimum.”
“My father was a marshal, I know the life.”
Crawford smiled a little. “What you do have is a double major in psychology and criminology, and how many summers working in a mental health center—two?”
“Two.”
“Your counselor’s license, is it current?”
“It’s good for two more years. I got it before you had the seminar at UVA—before I decided to do this.”
“You got stuck in the hiring freeze.”
Starling nodded. “I was lucky though—I found out in time to qualify as a Forensic Fellow. Then I could work in the lab until the Academy had an opening.”
“You wrote to me about coming here, didn’t you, and I don’t think I answered—I know I didn’t. I should have.”
“You’ve had plenty else to do.”
“Do you know about VI-CAP?”
“I know it’s the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. The Law Enforcement Bulletin says you’re working on a database, but you aren’t operational yet.”
Crawford nodded. “We’ve developed a questionnaire. It applies to all the known serial murderers in modern times.” He handed her a thick sheaf of papers in a flimsy binding. “There’s a section for investigators, and one for surviving victims, if any. The blue is for the killer to answer if he will, and the pink is a series of questions an examiner asks the killer, getting his reactions as well as his answers. It’s a lot of paperwork.”
Paperwork. Clarice Starling’s self-interest snuffled ahead like a keen beagle. She smelled a job offer coming—probably the drudgery of feeding raw data into a new computer system. It was tempting to get into Behavioral Science in any capacity she could, but she knew what happens to a woman if she’s ever pegged as a secretary—it sticks until the end of time. A choice was coming, and she wanted to choose well.
Crawford was waiting for something—he must have asked her a question. Starling had to scramble to recall it:
“What tests have you given? Minnesota Multiphasic, ever? Rorschach?”
“Yes, MMPI, never Rorschach,” she said. “I’ve done Thematic Apperception and I’ve given children Bender-Gestalt.”
“Do you spook easily, Starling?”
“Not yet.”
“See, we’ve tried to interview and examine all the thirty-two known serial murderers we have in custody, to build up a database for psychological profiling in unsolved cases. Most of them went along with it—I think they’re driven to show off, a lot of them. Twenty-seven were willing to cooperate. Four on death row with appeals pending clammed up, understandably. But the one we want the most, we haven’t been able to get. I want you to go after him tomorrow in the asylum.”
Clarice Starling felt a glad knocking in her chest and some apprehension too.
“Who’s the subject?”
“The psychiatrist—Dr. Hannibal Lecter,” Crawford said.
A brief silence follows the name, always, in any civilized gathering.
Starling looked at Crawford steadily, but she was too still. “Hannibal the Cannibal,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Yes, well— Okay, right. I’m glad of the chance, but you have to know I’m wondering—why me?”
“Mainly because you’re available,” Crawford said. “I don’t expect him to cooperate. He’s already refused, but it was through an intermediary—the director of the hospital. I have to be able to say our qualified examiner went to him and asked him personally. There are reasons that don’t concern you. I don’t have anybody left in this section to do it.”
“You’re jammed—Buffalo Bill—and the things in Nevada,” Starling said.
“You got it. It’s the old story—not enough warm bodies.”
“You said tomorrow—you’re in a hurry. Any bearing on a current case?”
“No. I wish there were.”
“If he balks on me, do you still want a psychological evaluation?”
“No. I’m waist-deep in inaccessible-patient evaluations of Dr. Lecter and they’re all different.”
Crawford shook two vitamin C tablets into his palm, and mixed an Alka-Seltzer at the water cooler to wash them down. “It’s ridiculous, you know; Lecter’s a psychiatrist and he writes for the psychiatric journals himself—extraordinary stuff—but it’s never about his own little anomalies. He pretended to go along with the hospital director, Chilton, once in some tests—sitting around with a blood-pressure cuff on his penis, looking at wreck pictures—then Lecter published first what he’d learned about Chilton and made a fool out of him. He responds to serious correspondence from psychiatric students in fields unrelated to his case, and that’s all he does. If he won’t talk to you, I just want straight reporting. How does he look, how does his cell look, what’s he doing. Local color, so to speak. Watch out for the press going in and coming out. Not the real press, the supermarket press. They love Lecter even better than Prince Andrew.”
“Didn’t a sleazo magazine offer him fifty thousand dollars for some recipes? I seem to remember that,” Starling said.
Crawford nodded. “I’m pretty sure the National Tattler has bought somebody inside the hospital and they may know you’re coming after I make the appointment.”
Crawford leaned forward until he faced her at a distance of two feet. She watched his half-glasses blur the bags under his eyes. He had gargled recently with Listerine.
“Now. I want your full attention, Starling. Are you listening to me?”
“Yes sir.”
“Be very careful with Hannibal Lecter. Dr. Chilton, the head of the mental hospital, will go over the physical procedure you use to deal with him. Don’t deviate from it.Do not deviate from it one iota for any reason. If Lecter talks to you at all, he’ll just be trying to find out about you. It’s the kind of curiosity that makes a snake look in a bird’s nest. We both know you have to back-and-forth a little in interviews, but you tell him no specifics about yourself. You don’t want any of your personal facts in his head. You know what he did to Will Graham.”
“I read about it when it happened.”
“He gutted Will with a linoleum knife when Will caught up with him. It’s a wonder Will didn’t die. Remember the Red Dragon? Lecter turned Francis Dolarhyde onto Will and his family. Will’s face looks like damn Picasso drew him, thanks to Lecter. He tore a nurse up in the asylum. Do your job, just don’t ever forget what he is.”
“And what’s that? Do you know?”
“I know he’s a monster. Beyond that, nobody can say for sure. Maybe you’ll find out; I didn’t pick you out of a hat, Starling. You asked me a couple of interesting questions when I was at UVA. The Director will see your own report over your signature—if it’s clear and tight and organized. I decide that. And I will have it by 0900 Sunday. Okay, Starling, carry on in the prescribed manner.”
Crawford smiled at her, but his eyes were dead.

Copyright © 1988 by Yazoo, Inc.
Author’s Note © 2013 by Yazoo Fabrications, Inc.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0312924585
Publisher ‏ : ‎ St. Martin's Paperbacks (February 15, 1991)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780312924584
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0312924584
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 770L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.19 x 0.88 x 6.81 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #64,789 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,952 in Psychological Thrillers (Books)
- #3,037 in Women Sleuths (Books)
- #6,788 in Suspense Thrillers

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Thomas Harris

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A native of Mississippi, Thomas Harris began his writing career covering crime in the United States and Mexico, and was a reporter and editor for the Associated Press in new York City. His first novel, Black Sunday, was published in 1975, followed by Red Dragon in 1981, The Silence of the Lambs in 1988, Hannibal in 1999 and Hannibal Rising in 2006.

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Steve C.

The Silence and the Fury

Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2014

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In rereading Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris’s great thriller, a couple of things occur to me—first, what a masterful example of the genre this was, even beyond the clever plotting and the fluid movement of the action. I won’t synopsize the plot extensively except to say that Clarice Starling, a young female trainee for the FBI, is recruited to help catch a serial killer by enlisting the help of another serial killer, Hannibal Lecter, who's currently incarcerated but even more dangerous than the one she’s chasing. It’s the curious relationship that develops between these two characters that is at the heart of the story.

Yes, there’s genuine shock value, but what sets this book apart from Harris's follow-up, Hannibal, is the real psychological acuity and the surprising compassion of Harris’s words. One example: “. . . the washing machine’s rhythm was like a great heartbeat and the rush of its waters was what the unborn hear—our last memory of peace.” Lovely asides such as this are not there to further the plot but they make you care about what you’re reading.

It’s in the moments when harshness and casual cruelty intermingle with insight and sentiment (not the maudlin or tawdry kind) that the tension Harris builds becomes almost unbearable. In Hannibal, Harris had resorted to shock value for its own sake—albeit in the very polished, professional effort that it was. But shock value without genuine empathy rarely gets a square hit on the nerves. Silence is even more polished, and it hits every note clearly, hits every nerve in the center. This reader felt every considerable jolt at the core, and this after having read the book and seen the movie a handful of times over the years. There isn't much that feels forced or gratuitous as the action and pathos lead you down a path on which you’re not sure you want to go but from which you can’t go back. It’s unlikely you’ll forget a single overturned stone on that path.

The other thing that occurred to me was how perfect the movie was as well—from the script and the casting—too bad there are no Academy Awards for casting—to the directing and acting. If you’re a fan of the suspense genre and haven’t read this yet, my god, you’re in for a treat. I wish I could go back and read it for the first time with no foreknowledge of what happens. And, no worries, the Kindle edition is well edited and faithful and includes an interesting introduction from Harris I had not seen before that provides background on his inspiration for the Lecter character. Enjoy!

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Lee C.

Fabulous!

Reviewed in the United States on February 18, 2024

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Great book!! Great characters, plot, grit and suspense. Very close to the movie adaptation. Grim and tense, terrible and terrifying.

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Ana Mardoll

Entertaining Thriller

Reviewed in the United States on June 2, 2013

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The Silence of the Lambs / 0099446782

On the grounds that everyone else on earth has seen the movie, I rented Silence of the Lambs over the weekend and found it surprisingly better than I'd expected: as far as classic films go, the movie held up well, and I was pleased to find how much of the movie explores institutional misogyny in the FBI and how Clarice Starling is forced to navigate a lot of hurdles that her male colleagues don't. Indeed, the movie piqued my interest enough that I bought the kindle book and audible audiobook and read along with the narrator to see if this theme was explored in more depth in the novel.

Twenty-four hours later, I'm still not sure how to rate this book. I found it entertaining to read/listen to. The novel is well-written from a purely technical perspective, though the occasional jumps to present tense when talking about people from Starling's past were sometimes disconcerting for me, since I'm less used to that style of writing. (Example: "Jimmy Price *is* a supervisor in Latent Prints at the Washington lab. Starling *did* time with him as a Forensic Fellow." [emphasis mine]) In some ways, the novel reminds me of the parts I liked in Steig Larsson's Millennium Trilogy , and the way the author could use otherwise "mundane" details to make the story feel vivid and immediate.

Also like Steig Larsson's trilogy, I feel like this book is trying to be an ally to women, and seeks to make some good feminist points...but I'm not sure how well it succeeds. I like protagonist Clarice Starling and I love her roommate Ardelia Mapp, and their conversations are some of the best in the novel. There's a lot of institutionalized misogyny that Clarice is forced to navigate around, just like in the movie, and quite a bit of this is handled reasonably well. There's a good conversation with Hannibal Lector about how society mistakes rage for lust, which I thought was a good dismantling of a lot of false "rape is a compliment" narratives. And I deeply appreciate the point made later in the novel when Clarice notes the incongruity in a case where all the victims are women, and yet NONE of the investigators are. That is a very crucial point that needs to be hammered home, and Harris does a good job of it.

On the other hand, the level of issues in this novel for female bodies that happen to be fat just about took my breath away, and it can't all be laid at the doorstep of the misogynistic serial killer. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when Starling came to the conclusion that the serial killer would have been *forced* to stalk his victims (as opposed to kidnapping them opportunistically) because tall, fat women "aren't common" and that if he'd just staked out a location waiting for one to walk by then he "could sit for days and not see one." Because us tall, fat women are like invisible pink unicorns! And our invisibility is an objective fact and not a matter of people only noticing the people they subjectively prefer to focus on.

Additionally, the author can't seem to decide what level of "sisterhood" he wants to push as part of the narrative. It's a very good point that a case with all-women victims deserves to have women investigators on the team. And Starling may well be correct when she claims that she "can walk in a woman's room and know three times as much about her as a man would know", although I would say that statement is an over-generalization that very much depends on both the woman who owns the room and the hypothetical man looking at it.

At the same time, Starling has moments where she has to push through her own rage and distaste and misplaced pity: anger at women who were born into more money than she; distaste for women with fat bodies who are axiomatically "hard on [their] shoes" which are "strained into ovals"; pity on fat women who are willing to date men who aren't turned off by fat bodies. I think Harris intends these details to make Starling realistically flawed, yet even after she works through her issues, she still feels judgmental of other women, trapped in the Exceptional Woman stereotype that helps her navigate institutionalized sexism but doesn't tear it down. The overall effect muddles the intended feminist message I feel the author is trying to deliver.

I've noted elsewhere that the movie is a mess when it comes to trans* issues, and the book tries to do better. There's much firmer establishment here of the fact that the serial killer is not a trans woman and that most trans* people are not violent -- indeed, that violence is much more common among cis people. But there's still the problematic framing that trans* people are "passive", which is a blanket characterization which others trans* people into a monolith with a word which is almost never used in a positive manner. ("Passive" is rarely a compliment, in my experience.) Additionally, the assessment of why the killer is not really trans* largely boils down to "because he gave the wrong answers on the psychiatric assessments", and some of these passages in the novel end up sounding reductionist, like there's only one "right" way to be a trans* person. As with the women's issues, it feels like the narrative was TRYING to be sensitive, but missed the boat.

I want to be clear, because sometimes my reviews are misunderstood: I enjoyed this novel. I'm giving it 4-stars. I'm pleased that I bought and listened to/read it. I might read it again someday. If you don't mind the above issues and/or can turn off the parts of your brain that are bothered by them for however long it takes to read a classic thriller novel, I recommend this book as enjoyable. But at the same time, this isn't a flawless novel of perfection, and I was a little disappointed to see an author try so hard to be an ally and miss the mark in places. Though I'm glad he tried at all, I hope that future writers who are inspired by this classic will improve on these flaws.

A note on the audiobook for this novel: I purchased the unabridged recording narrated by Frank Muller through Audible. Muller does a good job on the narration, but there's a persistent white noise hum in the background that I managed to tune out *except* when there was complete silence between chapters, at which point I noticed the soft white noise hum all over again when it started up in the next chapter -- each new chapter, I had to re-acclimate to the underlying sound, which took several sentences to get used to.

There's also a weird artifact on the track at the moment: at some points in the narration, there's "ghosting" on the track, as though there were two identical recordings of Muller's voice (a left and a right for stereo, maybe?) and one track suddenly falls a half-second behind the other, so it sounds like he's repeating himself for a moment until the voices re-sync. You can hear this at half a dozen points in the audio, including at Chapter 15 at time 3.08.49. I've reported this content error to Audible and they've been able to reproduce the error on their end, but they haven't yet fixed it as of 6/2/2013.

~ Ana Mardoll

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Top reviews from other countries

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Estefania Tobón

Todo bien

Reviewed in Mexico on March 4, 2023

Verified Purchase

Llegó en buen estado

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Aitor

estupendo libro

Reviewed in Spain on March 16, 2024

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El libro ha llegado un poco tarde, pero venía desde Inglaterra. Está en bastante buen estado y no era caro. Muy contento.

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LSS

Lambs

Reviewed in Italy on January 3, 2024

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Notevole. Inglese non semplicissimo, ma capibile. Sul romanzo, ho trovato molto più interessante il rapporto tra Lecter e Starling che il giallo in sè in cui, alla fine, la trama consisteva nella ricerca affanata di un serial killer con manie psicotiche estreme.

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James

Awesome

Reviewed in Canada on July 9, 2020

Verified Purchase

This book was great! I loved the writing and its great to have a female protagonist in a crime book. I would love to read the rest of the series.
Clarice Starling is a female FBI agent sent to talk to Hanibal "the canibal" Lecter. Hanibal is by far my favorite character because he is interestin and cool. Hemakes forshadowing clips every once in a while ("do you sew?") or sometimes his clip are just plain cool. He seems to have a very good...nose, as he can smell the sweat on a inmate and a fresh band-aid on Clarice. I loved his interaction with Clarice and was less worried about him killing people after escape, then him acually getting shot by police.
The story is kind of far fetched in some ways (smelling a hidden band-aid, sewing skin to make a suit) but I loved the subplot--the story Clarice tells Dc. Lecter in which one year at her uncles farm she realizes horses were getting slaughtered and fed out to her and the family. She wakes up in the night to hear spring lambs screaming so she takes a blind horse an escapes from the farm. The horse, Hannah is taking to a nice center and she is taken back to her family. The only time "the silence of the lambs" is said is at the end, making the subplot (her relationship with Hanibal) more significant. I can only imaging Hanibal in his hockey mask, in full restraints and bond to a hnd truck. I loved the scene were he escapes, but it is slightly confusing and far fetched (wereing someones face?!?!) but I was worried the police force were going to blast Hanibal into (deserved?) oblivion. I liked they showed Buffalo Bills, Hanibals, and Catherines perspective. Silence of the lambs is absoloutly amazing-- more Hanibal reveiws to come.

Abhishek Mishra

A must read

Reviewed in India on May 19, 2021

Verified Purchase

Serial killers are my most favourite character tropes in thriller and Hannibal Lecter is the first name to pop up in mind when you hear the term. Although I've seen the amazing portrayal of the character by Anthony Hopkins, I was sceptical of reading the novel because to be honest I never expected book version to be better. And after reading Red Dragon I was sure that this series is going to be bad but boy I'm glad I was wrong. This book is incredible.

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Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee in Behavioural Science unit is tasked by her mentor Jack Crawford, to interview Hannibal Lecter. Crawford hopes that Lector will provide them with help in catching another serial killer Buffalo Bill, who abducts and kills young women. Clarice has personal demons of her own and sensing this, Lecter starts playing mind games with her. When a high profile girl is abducted, it is upto Clarice to find out about Bill using Lecter, in order to save the girl's life.
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This book has more or less the same plot as Red Dragon but it corrects all the flaws Red Dragon had. This book is exponentially better than the previous one. The character of Hannibal Lecter is truly worth the hype created in Red Dragon. The character of Clarice being strong but vulnerable is written very well. Many characters from previous novel are there but each is more fleshed out in this one.

This book is a must read by all the Thriller fans.
My ratings 5 stars 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

P.S. The movie version of this novel is one of the best movies ever made and is one of the only three movies to win Oscars in all the top 5 categories.

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