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    Red Dragon
    Red Dragon
    Red Dragon
    Audiobook (abridged)3 hours

    Red Dragon

    Written by Thomas Harris

    Narrated by Thomas Harris

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A quiet summer night...a neat suburban house...and another innocent, happy family is shattered -- the latest victims of a grisly series of hideous sacrificial killings that no one understands, and no one can stop. Nobody lives to tell of the unimaginable carnage. Only the blood-stained walls bear witness.

    All hope rests on Special Agent Will Graham, who must peer inside the killer's tortured soul to understand his rage, to anticipate and prevent his next vicious crime. Desperate for help, Graham finds himself locked in a deadly alliance with the brilliant Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the infamous mass murderer who Graham put in prison years ago. As the imprisoned Lecter tightens the reins of revenge, Graham's feverish pursuit of the Red Dragon draws him inside the warped mind of a psychopath, into an unforgettable world of demonic ritual and violence, beyond the limits of human terror.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateMar 15, 1989
    ISBN9780743545778
    Red Dragon
    Author

    Thomas Harris

    A native of Mississippi, Thomas Harris began his writing career covering crime in the United States and Mexico, and was a reporter and editor for the Associated Press in New York City. His first novel, Black Sunday, was published in 1975, followed by Red Dragon in 1981 and The Silence of the Lambs in 1988. Hannibal, Harris' third book featuring Hannibal Lecter was an international bestseller.

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    Reviews for Red Dragon

    4/5

    111 ratings49 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Do you believe in the Tooth Fairy? ...

      The inspiration behind 1992's "The Silence of the Lambs" is the horrifying Thomas Harris blood-curdler, Red Dragon.

      Honestly, I don't believe that you'll ever look at the William Blake painted masterpiece, The Great Red Dragon, in the same way again after you've read this novel.
      . . .At least not if you're like me and share a passion for art.

      Red Dragon is a well-written, electrifying horror that will wrap its readers in sheer fear. Not for the faint of art, I mean heart.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      I may have had unrealistic expectations- following Silence of the Lambs. Just didn’t grab me.
    • 2/5
      I enjoyed the first 3/4 of the book. Then the author did a flashback of the evil guy's childhood. It was going so well, good police procedural, action, and murder type stuff going on. The weird back story contained information used in the plot, but did not add any entertainment value. Then, after all the clever material the police investigator came up with, he missed the most obvious thing that is about to happen in the "cliff hanger" ending. Very disappointing.
    • 4/5
      Will Graham is good at catching serial killers, but the stress forces him into early retirement from government service - until a new one emerges, killing entire families at a time. In some ways this is your standard thriller, with the cops racing to catch the bad guy before he kills again, but the killer himself has an interesting and somewhat tragic backstory. Even more fascinating to me was watching the crime solving done with early pre-DNA technology. It's a similar appeal to the Sherlock Holmes stories, solving mysteries without fingerprinting. Of course, these were all written with the then-latest technology in mind, but that adds an extra layer of interest to me as the years go by. I suppose if you're only interested in the latest and greatest, this could come across as slightly dated. All the same, I really enjoyed it, even if The Silence of the Lambs was, in my humble opinion, a lot better.For all the advertisement on the cover about this being the first Hannibal Lecter book, he's barely in it at all. It's not too surprising that the "ask a serial killer for help catching a serial killer" bit was reused to greater effect in The Silence of the Lambs. In fact, it would probably be helpful to read that one first in order to understand all the hullabaloo about that character in the first place - you certainly don't get much of a taste (ha!) of it here.
    • 5/5
      This book is the prequel to The Silence of the Lambs, but alas, it is not the story of Hannibal Lecter as I thought it would be. However, he does have a small role in the story. Mostly it's about the detective who captured Dr. Lecter, and his plight as he tries to figure out who the Red Dragon is and how he chooses the families he's going to slay.If you like a gruesome mystery, I highly recommend it.
    • 2/5
      This book is marginally better than Harris' Silence of the Lambs, but only just. This is an author who writes prose like he's formulating a screenplay--which just doesn't work out in a medium like the novel. I couldn't become attached to any of his characters, and it was a struggle towards the end, forcing myself to slog through chapters just so I could cross the book off my list. Skip Harris' novels. The movies are great, but he's just not cut out to write prose.
    • 4/5
      At the time of this book's publication (and even when the movie Manhunter) was released, the gruesomeness of the crimes depicted were shocking and extreme. Unfortunately, since then, real killers such as Dahmer and BTK make this novel's killer seem less terrible than at the time.However, the book still stands the test of time well. Harris is building up to Silence of the Lambs, which is certainly one of the best novels of its genre. Lecter's character is introduced, and it's a good opening volume in the arc.
    • 4/5
      I kept forgetting this is from '81, so I spent the whole book going, "WHAT ABOUT DNA?!"

      But it was great, I'd only read Hannibal (which was amazing, too) but Harris really knows how to draw the reader in without fancy trappings, just plain good ol' writing.

      Man, anyone watching the new Hannibal tv series is in for some rough shit, if they follow what happened in the book...
    • 5/5
      Red Dragon is a first-rate suspense thriller! I could not put the book down...literally...I read it in one sitting. What a great new voice in the psychological thriller!!
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this book more when it was Silence of the Lambs. The two novels are very similar in many ways, but Red Dragon feels like a book that was written after SotL's success in that everything is much more pronounced. The crimes are possibly more heinous, the descriptions of the psychopath longer and more gruesome, the interaction of law personnel with the case, especially that of the protagonist, more stark and hopeless. I felt like the two books were written with the same "winning formula" approach, and more enjoyed the more toned-down version in SotL and its increased involvement with Hannibal Lector.
    • 3/5
      I am loving NBC's new Hannibal, so I had to pick this up. However, I think this book suffers from a case of overly long flashback syndrome. But I still love Will Graham, or Hugh Dancy. Whichever.
    • 4/5
      Gosh! I read this in about a week, which is quite quick for me at the moment. Kept going through phases where I couldn't put it down at night. This led to some late nights. Very enjoyable read with an engaging story. I didn't find it too frightening although some bits were a bit disturbing. Enjoyed the characters of Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter as well as the back story of the Red Dragon/Tooth Fairy. Will probably read some more of Harris based on this book.
    • 5/5
      I'd have to reread Silence of the Lambs to be sure, but this probably remains my favorite of the Lecter novels, in part because I really like the character of Will Graham. I knew the producers of the show Hannibal were primarily inspired by this novel in particular, but I hadn't realized how much they took ??the pendulum image is mentioned in the first few pages. (Also interesting how much dialogue was borrowed later by other movies ??"his pulse rate never rose even as he ate her tongue," etc.)

      Delightful pulp.
    • 5/5
      Excellently written. Very compelling page turner. Very dramatic and exciting. I will definitely be reading the next book of the series. It wasn't even as gory and violent as I had anticipated. It did cause me to lose some sleep though, but that was just because it was hard to stop reading it.
    • 4/5
      This was a book I cheated on a lot, which means I put it to pick up (and finish) other books, so it took me a while to finish Harris' debut Hannibal Lecter novel. Harris writes frugally, but smartly, and I admire him for that. However, a majority of the story was ruined for me because I had seen the film previously (it is mediocre, don't watch it). However, Harris has a much better version of the ending than the film does.
    • 5/5
      A serial killer has viciously attacked two families in the span of that many months. Jack Crawford is pooling all his resources and best people to help crack the case -- and that includes calling back into the field former special investigator Will Graham, who caught notorious serial killers Garrett Jacob Hobbs and Hannibal Lecter in the past.After watching the television show Hannibal, I was curious about getting into the source material and a short beach vacation provided the perfect impetus for a relatively quick suspenseful thriller read. Red Dragon was perfect for that, but it's more than that as well. Harris is a fine writer, and the characters all felt very real and fully developed. Even Dolarhyde, the sadistic killer, was given such a rich and pitiful backstory that you couldn't help but feel somewhat sympathetic towards him. There are definitely a lot of twists and turns in the plot but, having watched the show first, these were mostly spoiled for me. Nevertheless, the story was still gripping and had me wanting to keep reading to find out more about these characters and how exactly everything was going to unravel. A few things surprised me about the book -- mostly notably how little Hannibal Lecter actually appears in this title, considering how a series devoted to him continues after this. (I wonder now if Harris intended from the outset to make more of this character or if fan favoritism influenced the direction of the series.) The book may not be for the faint of heart but, honestly, compared to today's fare, it keeps the gruesome and gore to a minimum - far less than I expected actually, which was nice. And after having read this and appreciated it in its own right, I'm also now even more appreciative of the TV show and seeing how creator Bryan Fuller took the small snippets of Graham's past that were mentioned and developed them into larger, season-long story arcs while both staying true to the source material and giving it his own twist at the same time. I highly recommend this book for fans of the TV series or for those who just enjoy a good psychological thriller.
    • 4/5
      The book started off outstandingly. Rarely do I find a book that I cannot put down and this was one. Unfortunately I found the ending illogical and straight out of a Z-grade slasher film. I felt as if Harris submitted a great draft and his editor kicked it back, telling him to slap on an ending that would make it more appealing to Hollywood Studios. I'm not saying that happened, just an impression. Ironic hw another review said the "Manhunter " movie had a better ending... now I'm fascinated to see that flick!Overall, I would recommend Red Dragon; it really is a great Howcatchum story and perhaps others will enjoy the ending more than I did.
    • 1/5
      Nowhere did I see "abridged", wish I noticed the duration. Three wasted hours on spoilers, basically, because now I need to listen to the whole thing (which, so far, is infinitely better). Much is lost in the truncating.
    • 4/5
      Yeesh. Dark stuff. Harris is a terrific writer. My only niggling complaint is that I got a little more of the killer's past than I wanted. Yet he wrote the killer in such a way that I felt a pull of compassion for him.
    • 4/5
      3.5 Stars

      This book was everything it promised to be - creepy, thrilling, fast paced - I just couldn't put it down. It was mindblowing. It was scary. I think I will have nightmares for weeks because of this book. But, it didn't meet my expectations.

      I would have gladly given this book five stars - but there was something more that I wanted from it and it failed to deliver. I loved the idea of this book - the whole thing was very, very disturbing. But the writing felt off most of the time. Like the author didn't know how to express this idea in words to do it enough justice. And that was exactly what happened.

      I will definitely stick with this series - the whole concept of Dr. Lecter is enough to blow my mind away.

      Not recommended to the faint of heart.
    • 3/5
      It's very interesting to read this now, when I'm nearly at the end of my crime fiction course, because I've got some idea of what the trends in crime fiction are, and what's new or interesting or different about various texts. For example, the inclusion of serial killers and particularly the focus on them -- the invitation to identify with them, at least in Dolarhyde's case. I'm probably going to write my essay on the changing representation of the criminal over the course of the 20th century. The other thing is the blurred line between the criminals and the detective figure: he identifies with them, despite their monstrousness.

      I'm glad I finally started reading these books. Hannibal Lecter is quite pervasive, culturally: even without reading the books I knew about him. He's the main attraction of the book, I think, at least now in retrospect, because he's so incomprehensible and fascinating and so much is alluded to without explanation -- like his capture, and what exactly he did.

      There were some other particularly interesting parts, if only personally -- like the blind woman, Reba -- but mostly I was reading it for Hannibal. I'm glad this one wasn't too grotesque: there were some bits I didn't like, but it wasn't like The Mermaids Singing.
    • 5/5
      I first read this book when I was a teenager, and it scared me; recently, I picked it up again, and it was just as terrifying and delightful as before. Thomas Harris is my hero, and he made me love the villain, and the complexity that one needs to have. Great book that I can't recommend enough. If I could give it 100 stars, I would!!!!!
    • 5/5
      In my opinion his best book. I read this long before Silence came out, a lucky find off the shelves in The Barbican library. Thought it was terrific. Read bits out to my partner in bed who was equally enthralled. One of my top ten favourite books of all time.
    • 5/5
      Thomas Harris is renowned for his ability to create gripping thrillers, and this first look into Hannibal Lecter is certainly no disappointment. It's clear that this was an earlier work of Harris', the voice isn't quite as strong here; but this is still a great suspenseful story of the cat and mouse between law and serial killer, with characters you can really feel.
    • 5/5
      This book gave me nightmares. However, it is very hard to put it down. I think that the beauty of Harris' novel is that I really felt compassion for Dolarhyde in this book. He didn't become a monster on his own; his horrible childhood and the people involved in his childhood could take most of the blame. Even in my nightmares I had such empathy for this man.
    • 4/5
      Thomas Harris has introduced audiences to, perhaps, the best serial killer of all time. Hannibal Lecter is a creepy psychotic killer that will get under your skin from the start. I found it interesting that he was used as an almost partner in catching the main killer, the Dragon. Both killers seem original, and it is this dark, gothic story that will have readers craving more.
    • 5/5
      This was a GREAT story! I think I liked this more than the movie. I loved the backstory of Francis and finding out why he was the monster that he was.
    • 5/5
      Read/Listened for Fun (Kindle/Audible)Overall Rating: 5.00Story Rating: 5.00Character Rating: 5.00Audio Rating: 3.50 (not part of the overall rating)First Thought when Finished: This is probably my 5th reread of Red Dragon by Thomas Harris and it still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up!Overall Thoughts: (Quick Review) Red Dragon is one of those books that even though you know exactly how it is going to end, it still gets to you. Very seldom is there two dynamic "bad" guys that are so brilliantly crafted. Hannibal is of course his dastardly self (I often forget this is the first book he appears in) and his level of evil is off the charts. It is also very different than Red Dragon/The Tooth Fairy. In fact, it is Francis that is fascinating to puzzle out. His back story is as twisted as his crimes. Will Graham has always been my favorite profiler. Sorry Clarice fans but Will is just more fascinating all around. The way his mind works is as interesting as the criminals he chases. This book is twisted and scary. Just how I like my serial killers!Audio Thoughts: Narrated By Alan Sklar / Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins I thought Alan did a great job with Will and Francis but his Hannibal was a little off. That being said, overall I loved his pacing and deliverance of the story. I would listen to this again!Final Thoughts: If you like scary (in a human not paranormal type of way) then read Red Dragon!
    • 5/5
      The book by which others are rated.. a relentless stare into the heart of pulp crime fiction and, JUST over the other side...
    • 5/5
      Den f?rste bog i serien om Hannibal Lecter, som blev kendt efter filmatiseringen af "Silence of the lambs" med Jodie Foster og Anthony Hopkins.