The Lair

With the possible exception of The Silence of the Lambs, every effort is made to portray Hannibal Lector as someone merely tragically flawed rather than an out and out psychopathic monster. He is often shown acting appropriately for the hero of the piece instead of the villian. Therein lies the moral dilemma. You want him to go down. Yet, he’s smarter than the opposition and you feel sympathy for his torment at losing his family. James Hadley Chase might have had Hannibal Lector committing suicide or running heroically into a police cordon only to be gunned down in a hail of lead in the final moments. Not Thomas Harris. Hannibal Lector escapes, gets the girl (well, sort of) and lives, as far as we can tell, the carefree life of the wealthy-enough-to-not-care.

If I wanted to compare Thomas Harris in Hannibal Rising with a completely different author, an easy jump would take me to Without Remorse by Tom Clancy. Just substitute profiteering Hiwis for drug dealers and the plot line runs essentially the same way. John Clark never did cannibalism though… “A brouchette, cheeks and morels” may well be the new “I ate his liver with fava beans and a nice chianti”.

Oh and major spoilers for Hannibal Rising follow..

In Hannibal Rising, the rehabilitation of Hannibal Lector’s image continues - he only kills the people who insult those close to him (the unfortunate Vichy butcher) or the profiteering collaborators (HiWis) whom he holds responsible for killing his sister. Resist it though I might, this line of rationalization did succeed in taking root. Hannibal emerges from the dust and confusion of multiple murders and moves to North America - a seemingly appropriate end as opposed to “[being] declared insane. In an asylum where they can study him and try to find out what he is”. The killing of the final collaborator by Hannibal is mentioned almost as an aside, because his murder was preferable to skiing.

In some ways, there is an emotional manipulation taking place… We (or at least I) want Hannibal to win out, want him to succeed despite his apparent psychopathy. I wanted the little guy to win over the hardened professional criminals. I wanted the intellectual planner to succeed over brutality. All of those things happen but in the end, I realize … wait, I’m actually rooting for Hannibal? Is that what was intended?…

As a whole, the book was probably not the best thing that Harris has produced. We already knew from subsequent books in the quartet that Lector possesses near incredible memory and a keen intellect - as well as a talent for drawing. The problem really was the lack of sufficent depth in the mind palace that constituted Hannibal Rising to give loads of fresh insight. A thriller, yes. Unpredictable? No, not really. Other than the distractions of Lady Murasaki and Inspector Popil, there were few other well fleshed out characters and the book overall probably suffered as a result.

Now we’ve also established that my choice of people to root for can be dubious… The manner in which Saddam conducted himself during his last moments made him comparable to the fictional Hannibal Lector in my view. Was Saddam really that different from … say Pinochet? One was hanged by the neck till dead, a mere month after being sentenced. The other dictator died in hospital, surrounded by his family, at the age of 91.