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1-Page Summary of Hannibal
The third book in the Hannibal Lecter series, American author Thomas Harris’s mystery crime thriller and horror novel, Hannibal (1999), takes place seven years after Lecter escaped a maximum security mental institution at the end of Silence of the Lambs. The story continues Lecter’s time on the run in Florence, Italy. When Mason Verger, a vengeful victim and sadistic psychopath, targets Lecter to use him as bait to lure Agent Clarice Starling into his trap for revenge against her for leaving him maimed after he kidnapped her during an earlier investigation, Lecter must thwart Verger’s plot.
The novel has been called “the most elegant horror story ever written” by The Guardian and “terrifying” by the Los Angeles Times. It was adapted into a film in 2001, directed by Sir Ridley Scott and starring Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter and Julianne Moore as Clarice Starling. In 2013, it was adapted into a TV series created by Bryan Fuller for NBC, starring Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal Lecter.
The story is told in the third person, and it begins with a conversation between Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter. It has been seven years since they last spoke to each other. Lecter’s letter was sent to her after she accidentally shot someone during a raid on a drug dealer’s house. In his letter, he asks for more personal details about her life. The FBI orders Clarice Starling to go find Dr. Hannibal Lecter in Italy because they believe that he will help them track down another serial killer who escaped from prison recently and may be headed there as well. She then meets Barney Matthews at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane where she worked when she first met Dr. Hannibal Lecter years earlier, before going off to college at Quantico Federal Academy which is located close by Washington D.C.. He tells her that he doesn’t think that this trip will end up being successful like all of the others have been unless something changes soon “because I know him better than you do…he won’t come if you don’t want him too…”
Mason Verger, a wealthy patient of Dr. Lecter’s and the sixth victim, plans to take revenge on him by luring him into his trap. Mason was disfigured by Lecter many years before; he wants to feed Dr. Lecter to wild boars from his butcher empire as an act of vengeance for what he did to him. He uses Agent Starling (Clarice) as a pawn in this plan because she is unaware of it and he thinks that will make her more likely to succeed in luring Dr. Lecter into the trap so that Mason can kill him after all these years since their last encounter with each other when they were young men at college together.
Lecter puts out a bounty for Hannibal, drawing the interest of Starling’s nemesis. However, Lecter kills Pazzi and hangs him in a grotesque manner reminiscent of the historical lynching of the Pazzi conspirators. Lecter also murders one of Pazzi’s underlings and flees to America to pursue Agent Starling. A brief history is given on Lecter’s orphaned childhood; it explains how his sister died at the hands of WWII deserters who ate her corpse, which has haunted him ever since.
Later, Matthews agrees to work for Verger. He visits Margot Verger and learns that she was raped by Mason as a child. Her father disowned her because she’s gay and cut her out of the family will for being unable to have children with a man. She works with Verger because she needs Mason’s sperm in order to have a child with Judy and become eligible to inherit her father’s fortune.
Verger’s henchmen find Lecter and capture him. Starling chases after them, but is hit by a tranquilizer dart from one of the henchman’s guns. The boars go on to attack Verger’s men before they can hurt Lecter. He escapes with Starling in his arms while she is unconscious.
