Red Dragon(novel)

Red Dragonis apsychological horrornovelby American authorThomas Harris,first published in 1981. The story follows former FBI profilerWill Graham,who comes out of retirement to find and apprehend an Enigma ticserial killernicknamed "the Tooth Fairy". The novel introduces the characterDr. Hannibal Lecter,a brilliantpsychiatristandcannibalisticserial killer whom Graham reluctantly turns to for advice and with whom he has a dark past.

Red Dragon

First US hardback edition cover
Author	Thomas Harris
Language	English
Series	Hannibal Lecter
Genre	Crime,horror,thriller,psychological horror
Publisher	G. P. Putnams,Dell Publishing(USA)
Publication date	October 1981
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardback&Paperback)
Pages	348 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBN	0-399-12442-X(first edition, hardback)
OCLC	7572747
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 19
LC Class	PS3558.A6558 R4 1981
Preceded by	Hannibal Rising
Followed by	The Silence of the Lambs

William Blake(British, 1757–1827)The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun(Rev. 12: 1–4), c. 1803–1805 –Brooklyn Museum

The title refers to the figure fromWilliam Blake's paintingThe Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun.The novel was adapted as a film,Manhunter,in 1986, which featuredBrian Coxas Hannibal "Lecktor". Directed byMichael Mann,the film received mixed reviews and fared poorly at the box office, but it has since developed acult following.

After Harris wrote a sequel to the novel,The Silence of the Lambs(1988), that was turned into a highly successfulfilm of the same namein 1991,Red Dragonfound a new readership. The film featuredAnthony Hopkinsin the role of Hannibal Lecter, for which he won anOscarforBest Actorin 1991. Due to the success of the film and its sequel,Red Dragonwasremade as a filmdirected byBrett Ratnerin 2002, this time bearing the title of the original novel and with Hopkins playing Lecter. Elements of the novel also influenced the NBC television seriesHannibal,while the plot was adapted as the second half of the series' third season.

Plot

In 1976,Will Graham,a brilliantprofilerof theFBI,captured theserial killerHannibal Lecter,a world-renowned psychiatrist who artistically killed and ate his victims. However, Graham suffered serious injuries from the encounter and retired afterward.

Three years later, in 1979, a serial killer nicknamed "The Tooth Fairy"stalksand murders seemingly random families during sequential full moons. He first kills the Jacobi family inBirmingham, Alabama,then the Leeds family inAtlanta, Georgia,in both cases breaking into the family home at night, shooting the parents and children, and thenhaving intercourse with the mother's bodyafter she dies, leaving a distinctive bite pattern on her body. Two days after the Leeds murders, agentJack Crawford,Graham's mentor, goes to Graham'sMarathon, Floridaresidence and pleads for his assistance; Graham reluctantly agrees.

After looking over the crime scenes, Graham realizes that the killer posed the family's bodies as an audience during the rape, and accurately predicts the FBI will find the killer's fingerprints on the victims' eyes. He also discovers a stakeout location where the killer watched the home from a nearby wood and discovers a Chinese character carved into a tree: amahjongsymbol known as thered dragon.Having reached a dead end, Graham realizes he must visit Lecter and seek his help to capture "the Tooth Fairy." Lecter, locked in a maximum security cell in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, offers Enigma tic clues to the killer's pathology and cruelly taunts Will that the reason he caught Lecter is because they are alike, disturbing Graham and causing him to cut the meeting short.

"The Tooth Fairy" is revealed (to the readers) to be the production chief of aSt. Louisfilm processingfirm namedFrancis Dolarhyde.He is a disturbed individual obsessed with theWilliam BlakepaintingThe Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun.Born with a severecleft palate,Dolarhyde believes himself weak and deformed despite having had corrective surgery. He is unable to control his violent, sexual urges, and believes that murdering people—or "changing" them, as he calls it—allows him to more fully "become" analternate personalityhe calls the "Great Red Dragon", after the dominant character in Blake's painting. Flashbacks reveal that his sociopathy is born from the systematicabusehe suffered as a child at the hands of hissadisticgrandmother who raised him after his mother abandoned him as an infant.

As Graham investigates the case, he is hounded byFreddy Lounds,a sleazytabloidreporter, who publishes an article about Graham consulting Lecter. Dolarhyde, reading the article, writes a fan letter to Lecter, asking for a response.Frederick Chilton,the head of the institute and Lecter's self-styled nemesis, discovers the letter hidden in Lecter's cell with Dolarhyde's instructions for how to contact him removed. After significant forensic analysis, the FBI deduce that Lecter has placed a coded personal ad in Lounds' tabloid, the National Tattler, but are unable to break the code before the publishing deadline, and Graham reluctantly allows the ad to run. Lounds becomes aware of the correspondence and tries to trick Graham into revealing details of the investigation by posing as the killer but is found out and arrested. When the code is finally broken, it reveals Lecter has given Graham's address to the killer and tells him to save himself by killing the family. Graham's wife, Molly, and his stepson are evacuated, causing significant tension in his marriage.

Hoping to lure the Red Dragon into a trap, Graham gives Lounds an interview in which he deliberately mischaracterizes the killer as animpotenthomosexual,which includes clues to Graham's location. This infuriates Dolarhyde, but instead of pursuing Graham, he kidnaps Lounds. Gluing Lounds to a wheelchair, Dolarhyde forces him to recant the allegations on tape, bites off his lips and sets him on fire, leaving his maimed body outside his newspaper's offices. Lounds dies from his injuries soon afterward, and the tape of his assault is sent to his newspaper and the FBI. Graham receives a letter from Lecter, congratulating him on his indirect murder of Lounds.

At about the same time, Dolarhyde falls in love with a blind co-worker named Reba McClane, which conflicts with his homicidal urges. In beginning a relationship with McClane, Dolarhyde resists the Dragon's "possession" of him as it urges him to kill McClane; he goes to theBrooklyn Museum,beats a museum secretary unconscious, and eats the original Blake watercolor ofThe Red Dragon.

As the full moon nears, an increasingly desperate Graham realizes that the killer knew the layout of his victims' houses from their home movies, which were developed at the same film processing lab. Dolarhyde's job gives him access to all home movies that pass through the company. When he sees Graham interviewing his Boss, Dolarhyde realizes that they are on to him and goes to see McClane one last time. He finds her breaking up with her previous boyfriend, Ralph Mandy, to be with Dolarhyde; McClane grants Mandy's request for a final kiss goodbye. Enraged with jealousy, Dolarhyde kills Ralph Mandy. He kidnaps McClane and, having taken her to his house, sets the place on fire. He says he intends to kill her and then himself, but finds himself unable to shoot her. The shotgun fires, and McClane hears a body hit the floor. McClane escapes just before the house explodes. Graham later comforts her, telling her that there is nothing wrong with her and that the kindness and affection she showed Dolarhyde probably saved lives.

Believing Dolarhyde is dead, Graham's family moves back to theFloridahome. However, Dolarhyde shows up at the house and after a violent struggle, stabs Graham in the face before being fatally shot by Molly. Graham survives the attack, but he is left with permanent facial scars and it is implied that Molly will leave him. As he recovers, Crawford explains how Dolarhyde faked his death. The dead man in Dolarhyde's house was a gas station attendant he'd had an altercation with; Dolarhyde had brought the man's body to his house to stage his own death, using McClane as a witness. Crawford intercepts a letter to Graham from Lecter, which bids him well and hopes that he isn't too disfigured, and destroys it in an incinerator.

During his recovery, Graham has a flashback to a visit he made to Shiloh, the site ofa major battlein theAmerican Civil War,shortly after apprehending (and in the process, killing) Garrett Hobbs, a serial killer he investigated before Hannibal Lecter. Graham has an epiphany about the indifference of nature and decides that it is not nature that is haunted by events, as he had thought when visiting Shiloh before, but men who are haunted.

Characters

• Will Graham
• Francis Dolarhyde
• Jack Crawford
• Hannibal Lecter
• Freddy Lounds
• Reba McClane
• Ralph Mandy
• Molly Graham
• Willy Graham

Origin

Red Dragonis Thomas Harris's second novel, afterBlack Sunday.As part of his research for the book he attended classes and talked to agents at the FBIBehavioral Science Unitin Quantico, Virginia, during the late 1970s. He learned about serial killers,offender profilingand the role of the FBI in serial killer investigations.After his father became terminally ill, Harris stayed for 18 months at an isolatedshotgun-style housewhere he worked on the book. The rural setting helped him visualize both the character of Hannibal Lecter and the Leeds murder house depicted in the story. The book is dedicated to his father.

Reception

Thomas Fleming inThe New York Timesgave the book a generally favorable review. He compared the development of the story to the gradual acceleration of a powerful car, but complained that the explanation for Dolarhyde's behavior, trauma in his youth, was too mechanistic.James Ellroyhas describedRed Dragonas 'the best pure thriller I've ever read' and cited it as an influence on his own novelKiller on the Road.In a 1981 article for the Washington Post, horror authorStephen Kingpraised it as "probably the best popular novel to be published in America sinceThe Godfather."

Dave PringlereviewedRed DragonforImaginemagazine, calling it "an excellent thriller about a man who murders whole families with the aid of his grandmother's false teeth (I kid not)."

Adaptations

• The first film, released in 1986 under the titleManhunter,was written and directed byMichael Mannand focused onFBISpecial Agent Will Graham, played byWilliam Petersen.Lecter (renamed Lecktor) was played byBrian Cox.
• In 1996, Chicago'sDefiant Theatreproduced a full stage version of the novel at the Firehouse theatre, adapted and directed by the company's artistic director, Christopher Johnson. The production included projected home movies as were described in the novel, including reenacting the violent murders. Dolarhyde's inner dragon was personified by an actor in an elaborate, grotesque costume and seduces the killer to continue on his violent path.
• The second film, which used the titleRed Dragon,appeared in 2002. Directed byBrett Ratnerand written byTed Tally(who also wrote thescreenplayforThe Silence of the Lambs), it starredEdward Nortonas Graham andAnthony Hopkinsas Lecter.
• Elements from the novel influenced the NBC TV adaptationHannibal,which first aired in 2013. Graham is played byHugh Dancy,and Lecter is played byMads Mikkelsen.Though set in the 2010s, the series begins prior to the events ofRed Dragon,reimagining Graham's and Lecter's early encounters during the former's tenure with the FBI and the events following his fatal shooting of Garret Jacob Hobbs. The plot of the novel itself was adapted for the second half of the series' third season, withRichard Armitagecast as Francis DolarhydeandRutina Wesleyas Reba McClane.