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.

These are the opening words to the novel Silence of the Lambs by author Thomas Harris; these few words hooked me immediately and pulled me down into the world of Dr. Hannibal Lecter and didn’t let me go until I finished the book some seven hours later. To this day The Silence of the Lambs remains the only book that I have ever read from front to back in one session.

Harris was able to, quite literally, draw me into the world of not only Dr. Lecter, but also of agent Clarice Starling and of the fiendish Jame Gumb and the intricate game of “quid pro quo” that goes on between them. The book is just so superbly crafted and paced that you just flow through the pages wanting more and waiting to see what happens next, which makes it so hard to put down for any length of time, I think because you’re afraid to miss what might happen if you don’t read the next page.

We all know the story of Dr. Lecter now, thanks to the great film by Jonathan Demme in 1991, but I received this book from my uncle, who was a policeman in Baltimore, during a Christmas visit in 1990. He said “I think, you’ll like this, it’s pretty dark, but really smart, plus it takes place where I work.” That night I learned how quickly he was right as I spent December 22nd alone with the book.

The film follows the book nearly page for page, but it just seemed so much better when I read it as compared to when I saw it. While reading the book I felt that I was eavesdropping on Clarice and Hannibal as they had their little talks and when Clarice entered the dark basement of Buffalo Bill, I was as blind as she was.

The Silence of the Lambs is just a tremendous book and should be read by any fan of Hannibal Lecter’s legacy of evil, so to say.

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