The first time we - that's we the reading public - met Dr Hannibal Lecter, he was lying on his cot in his cell at the Chesapeake State Hospital for the Criminally Insane with a copy of Alexandre Dumas's Grand dictionnaire de cuisine open on his chest. Lecter was incarcerated for having murdered nine people 'that we know about', and having crippled two others, one of whom (of whom more later) was permanently attached to a respirator in Baltimore. Dr Lecter was being visited by Will Graham, a Special Investigator attached to the FBI, in pursuit of a man who had murdered two families. When Graham arrives at Lecter's cell, the good doctor wakes up: 'Dr Lecter's eyes are maroon and they reflect the light redly in tiny points.' Brrrrr. Is it chilly in here, or is it me?

LRB 29 July 1999 | PDF Download