The Silence of the Lambs (1000 Books to Read)

FINISHED May 5

I will never see this movie. But the book was so well-written, and I always find them less scary than the film.

What a thriller! 

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

Hannibal Lecter is one of the most chillingly drawn villains in the annals of modern fiction. He is perverse, polite, charming, brilliant, and brutal, and the FBI would like to lure him into helping with an ongoing investigation of a string of savage killings of young women that have left them baffled. Armed with a questionnaire and the protection of a file folder, Agent Clarice Starling comes face-to-face with the cannibalistic murderer, who is serving nine consecutive life sentences in a mental institution. So the forces of social order meet the urges of the sociopath; one side of that equation, as the reader soon recognizes, is seriously underprepared. Twisted minds, tortured bodies, and a straight line of perfectly pitched suspense add real horror to Thomas Harris’s novel, yet it is the riveting allure of Hannibal Lecter, the singular character at its core, that puts it in a class of its own as a modern thriller.