This book was delightfully readable due to it's effective pacing, but there were uncomfortable moments for me. Sometimes it was just a weird turn of phrase, sometimes it was my distrust of Harris's writing of his cool female protagonist (why is she even on this case? why does her relationship with her boss feel so weird? why does she feel like such an epic character but at the same time not fully real?) And then there was the moment of realization 'oh, this is one of the books I always read about in articles about awful depictions of trans characters.' Harris tries maybe to skirt a line where he draws his serial killer as *not* trans, explaining that it's the not-trans-ness of the character that makes them want to skin women, in contrast to people who are legitimately trans who are highly unlikely to be serial killers. I don't really think it works. My advice for writing a murderer with such a tenuous distinction from an oppressed and vilified minority group with negligible positive depictions in media would be to not do it.

Those were my initial thoughts. I read this article (which is about the film but it sounds like they are very similar) and it opened my eyes to a lot more transmisogyny than I'd first understood. I didn't know a lot of the history of medical gatekeeping that trans individuals face in seeking to transition, and in that light it's hard to read Jame as not "really" trans. If you read the character as a ceaselessly misgendered trans woman, the whole story is promoting fear of trans women as the epitome of male violence. http://feministing.com/2016/03/10/my-auntie-buffalo-bill-the-unavoidable-transmisogyny-of-silence-of-the-lambs/

Despite my unease in reading Harris's writing, which is magnified by a greater understanding of its transmisogyny, I am probably interested to read more Hannibal Lecter. What a fascinating and frightening character.