Red Dragon

By: Thomas Harris

Narrated by: Alan Sklar

Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

A quiet summer night...a neat suburban house...and another innocent, happy family is shattered - the latest victims of a grisly series of hideous sacrificial killings that no one understands, and no one can stop. Nobody lives to tell of the unimaginable carnage. Only the blood-stained walls bear witness.

All hope rests on Special Agent Will Graham, who must peer inside the killer's tortured soul to understand his rage, to anticipate and prevent his next vicious crime. Desperate for help, Graham finds himself locked in a deadly alliance with the brilliant Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the infamous mass murderer who Graham put in prison years ago.

As the imprisoned Lecter tightens the reins of revenge, Graham's feverish pursuit of the Red Dragon draws him inside the warped mind of a psychopath, into an unforgettable world of demonic ritual and violence, beyond the limits of human terror.

©1981 Thomas Harris (P)2012 Random House Audiobooks

great book

loved the story from beginning to end. well written and great narration. will read more.

Revisiting a classic

I’ve read this book about 10 times and it never gets old. A great audio version, well narrated and as beautiful as ever.

Good read

This is the second book Crime Mystery book I’ve read and much like the first one this one takes some time to get rolling.

Once you get through I’d say about the first quarter of the book it really starts getting interesting, I started reading this book in Mid-March 2020 amid the Corona Virus pandemic. On normal occasions I read durning my lunch breaks and finish the chapter or hour which ever is more at night. This book (once the story took off) compelled me to start reading during breaks between customers at work.

The only negative I have about this particular story isn’t with the book itself but with the audiobook, it took some effort to listen to it with the monotoned voice of the narrator, but that was easily fixed by increasing the speed of the narration.

Soo goood

Gripping and thrilling look into mental health. I love the way the book jumps perspective without confusing the reader

maybe read this BEFORE Silence of the Lambs

I think the narrator is fine. I think I was spoiled reading Silence of the Lambs* first; that narrator is just unbeatable. After about 1/3 of the book I got used to it though. it can be hard to differentiate crawford/police/agents and Graham at times as the narrator tends to use a "generic guy voice" often.

The story is very similar to the movie & was not as good as *SotL, for me at least. The end has a lot of build up that the narrator doesn't seem to capture well... the tension doesn't rise, it stays consistent and leaves the ending feeling flat.

The main character is enjoyable to sit with & experience HIS version of reality though and I think its nice that it's untouched by Hollywood's need to romanticize the villains "love story". In print we get to see his internal thoughts are truly disturbed even when at his best behavior!

Harris is really great at making the villain and the "hero" just as fun to experience. Hannibal, Graham, & Starling are top tier characters thats feel very real. I do feel a bit silly for wishing Hannibal had been featured a little more.

Glad I listened to it, great author, good narrator and an okay ending.

Great Story- Terrible Narration

Thomas Harris did it again with this prequel to the silence of the lambs. I had read it before years ago, but it was nice to revisit. My only issue was with the narrator. His voice when speaking for the characters was often creepy and weird. The narrator for Hannibal was much better.

An inside look at insanity

This book that only takes you inside of an investigation also takes you inside of the killers mind not to mention introducing us to Hannibal Lecter.

Brilliant, tense, terrifying.

I’ve read this several times, listened to the audio book and seen each version of the film. It remains one of my favorite horror/suspense novels of all time.

Good but silence of the lambs is so much better

This is a good read if you really like horror or serial killers, but not transcendently brilliant in the way that silence of the lambs is. If you only ever read one Thomas Harris book, make it silence of the lambs.
This one doesn’t have very much Hannibal Lecter in it, and is a bit busier/wordier, and a lot more explicitly gruesome and brutal (in my opinion) that silence of the lambs, and for all those reasons is actually far less thrilling, frightening, and captivating.

Great story

Really good narrative and a great story with so many unpredictable twists and turns. Highly recommend this for people that enjoy true crime.