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Amazon.com Horror lit's head chef Harris serves up another course in his Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter trilogy, and it's a pièce de résistance for those with strong stomachs. In the first book, Red Dragon (filmed as Manhunter), Hannibal diabolically helps the FBI track a fascinating serial killer. (Takes one to know one.) In Hardcover edition. Reader Reviews A Master At Work, September 16, 2003 Reviewer: Arnold Schwarzenegger from Hollywood USA 'Hannibal', written by my best friend, Thomas Hairass, is suspense at its finest. Hairass is able to capture the mood with precision and textual economy. Three vignettes are worth mentioning; Lecter's penchant for openly flossing after eating Steak Tartare at Maxim's demonstrates his pathological disdain for accepted social behaviour; Clarice Starling declines Lecter's invitation to go ballroom dancing in a brilliantly constructed scene which includes the line, 'But Hannibaby, I've heard you trip not only the light fantastic but everything else on the dance floor!'; Mason Verger, one of Lecter's surviving victims, is hospitilized, and Hairass's dexterity with conflict is unforgettably immortilized when Verger snaps to a nurse, 'Will you please get this pelican out of my nightshirt! I said I wanted a bed-bath, not a bird-bath! If that weirdo hadn't eaten my hands, I'd wring its neck!' Hairass is a master wordsmith and this book is a classic. And it seems appropriate at this time to dispel the rumors regarding my decision to decline a role in the film. It wasn't the money, as reported in 'Rolling Stone'. It was because I hadn't played a pelican before and my agent said I'd never get the walk right.
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