Red DragonRed DragonA psychopath is at large; a monster in the grip of some unimaginable delusion compounded of sexual hunger, demonic violence and sinister logic; a boastful killer who sends the police teasing notes signed... the Red Dragon.
So they call in special agent Will Graham; the one man with the gift to get into the monster's mind; the one man who can imagine what the madman feels and can anticipate his next act.
Red Dragon is quite possibly the most suspenseful, terrifying and utterly compelling thriller ever written.
As to be expected, the blurb should be taken with a rather large pin... well, bag of salt. It was reasonably good, and yet it lacked that spark, I really didn't feel involved, nor even terrified, horrified at times, at some of the actions, but never actually scared, which surely is what I should have felt. I suppose I should really have read this before Silence of the Lambs, but I don't think that'd have changed my opinion, aside from me probably not even starting to read SotL. It seemed that within the book there was little flow, merely a series of jumps that never seem to link the parts successfully, the brief attempt to explain the actions of the killer in a sort of biography was tedious and seemed to imply that the back-story couldn't be developed in to the normal progression of the book so a couple of chapters were bunged in to make up for it. Aside from the negative the blind woman was an interesting idea, though poorly used, and the reporter was too stereotypical, and the bid to depart from the norm with his girlfriend was just weak. But then again, on the whole it didn't seem that bad, merely each of the parts seemed to have few redeeming features. SotL just showed how much he had improved.
Of course this may all be so negative, because I had just finished a really great book, or because I was in a bad mood, it may not really have been that bad, just seemed it.
Score 5/10
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