Hannibal, by Thomas Harris

An all right read, but only barely. It would have been a lot better if Mr. Harris hadn't indulged so much in the graphical gruesome as he did. The characters are much more interesting than the literally gory details of their actions and the author missed a chance of making this a memorable book. I truly enjoyed the part of the story that is set in Florence thanks to the more romantic tone of the writing. Towards the end, when the focus shifts towards scalpels, knives, and human body parts, I found that the line dividing horror and idiocy was crossed. Hannibal Lecter's characterization was well done, up to a certain part of the story when Mr. Harris took the intellect of his creation well beyond the believable. It became hard to conceive that Hannibal The Cannibal was a gourmet, a psychiatrist, a surgeon, a history and literature expert, an astrophysicist and cosmologist of the caliber of Stephen Hawking. Too bad that in order to create his monster, the author made him so terribly intellectually superior to anyone possibly imaginable and ended up with a pastiche.