I am just not sure if I can see what the big deal is with this book. I know some people find it incredibly frightening: a co-worker stole my mother’s copy of this book off her desk and then didn’t come to work for four days because she was too scared to get out of bed; I just found it slightly boring. I know I didn’t find anyone in it the least bit likable. I felt like I had wandered into the middle of a movie, and had completely missed not only the exposition, but also the chance to find out information that would have fleshed the characters out. The writing was staccato, and at times more broad allusions than actual hard writing. I will admit that part of the horror of the plot is lessened by the fact that people don’t develop home movies anymore; the killer would have to troll Facebook or Instagram looking for victims nowadays. Yet another in a long line of serial killers embodying overbearing female relatives (hello Norman Bates, hello Ed Geins, though Ed Geins’ mother was actually not really the problem; people at the time just had to blame a woman for her son’s faults.).
What I think really proves my opinion on the horror in the book: there is a scene where the killer eats a painting (the title painting), which is housed in the Brooklyn Museum, and the scene is supposed to be jarring and disturbing and show how far gone he is, and all I could think about was that Youtube video where the two Chinese reporters have a cotton candy eating contest; I kept picturing the killer as the female reporter and I couldn’t stop laughing. What The Red Dragon does with the mirrors is a bit creepy though, as well as poor, poor Freddy Lounds.
Far less Hannibal Lecter in this book than my mother led me to believe, as well as some plot points being not quite in the order she said they were in. Not that it matters that much, because in my opinion Hannibal Lecter was as much a barely sketched out character as the rest of them. Does Will Graham prove a takeoff on the whole “requires a thief to catch a thief”; “requires a damaged individual to catch a damaged individual”. Because Will Graham is damaged; he has to be in some way to able to put himself first in Lecter’s and then in the Red Dragon’s shoes. I guess it goes to show why BAU agents are required to have psych evals several times a year.
I will read The Silence of the Lambs sometime (not that I’m in a big rush to do so), but I will probably take my mother’s advice and just stop reading the series there; she said after that Harris jumped the shark, and I trust her opinion.