Enjoyable read, with a likable heroine and a couple of creepy villains. However - and I rarely say this! - it suffers in comparison to the movie and (most of all) the television series. I'm afraid the tv version of Hannibal, while more a prequel to this book than an adaptation of it, has delineated the characters so forcefully in my mind that they are forever the high water mark. The book just doesn't match up in its characterisation - this Hannibal Lecter seems cruder, less sophisticated... less menacing, frankly.

I did enjoy the focus on Catherine Martin, though. So often in crime stories the focus is taken away from the essential humanity of the victims, but Harris stuck with her here and she's almost as solid in my mind as Clarice Starling is.