Hannibal Lecter's Humble Beginnings

Red Dragon
by Thomas Harris
p. 1981

Red Dragon is the first book in the series by Thomas Harris that features notorious cannibal Hannibal Lecter, a character whose history I am slowly becoming familiar with. My first encounter with Lecter was, like most people, from the 1991 horror film, “Silence of the Lambs,” where he was famously portrayed by extra-creepy Anthony Hopkins. However, my preferred version of Lecter is from Bryan Fuller’s darkly indulgent NBC show, “Hannibal,” probably because it heavily emphasizes the relationship between Lecter and the profiler who originally caught him, Will Graham. Seeing as Red Dragon was the only book to feature Graham as a protagonist, I knew I’d have to read it eventually, and now was the best time for it seeing as a) the long hiatus between seasons has me in some serious withdrawal and b) though things play out differently on the show, judging by the timeline, the events of Red Dragon should start to crop up in the upcoming season, most notably in the form of its chief antagonist Francis Dolarhyde.

It was fun and revelatory reading Red Dragon after absorbing two seasons of “Hannibal.” I can easily see how Fuller was inspired from Harris’ text to translate the psyche of Will Graham to the small screen. I think the show’s portrayal of and casting for Graham is just spot on, although I think the show makes Graham more sympathetic (or perhaps just pathetic) and certainly more complicated. I can see why this was done; if the show is to depict Graham on a long term basis, he’s going to have to throw himself into more complicated plots. The novel version of Graham, as I understand it, plays his part here and quietly lives out a depressing retirement. The TV version of Graham may have mistakenly given me a greater impression of his importance to the Hannibal Lecter mythology, but I have to admit it’s been nice seeing such intense emphasis on Graham’s history, as it is only briefly touched upon in Red Dragon.

I could go on forever about the show, but I don’t want to downplay how much I enjoyed this book. I was enthralled with Thomas Harris’ writing style, and found myself pushing on chapter after chapter even if I had things besides reading that I should have been doing. With the emphasis on Graham’s profiling skills—enhanced as they are by his intelligence, his eidetic memory, and his ability to wholly empathasize with everyone, be they victim or killer—the whole thing sort of read like a really long, really intense episode of “Criminal Minds.” By the halfway point of the novel, we know who the killer is and, through his point of view, we begin to understand his psychosis, but there is still tension in wondering how and when the two will inevitably collide. Dolarhyde, Lecter, Graham, Jack Crawford, Freddy Lounds—these are all powerful personalities whose interactions are like a powder keg waiting to go off. We learn just enough about each character to leave me thoroughly invested in their part of the plot. Freddy Lounds is a bastard you just love to hate. Crawford and his team are efficient and whip smart. And Dolarhyde is downright sympathetic at times. I was surprised to find myself feeling so sorry for him and his relationship with Reba McClane left me feeling really complicated. She brought out the twisted killer’s humanity yet I felt so so afraid for her throughout the whole ordeal.

The only thing I didn’t care for was the abrupt ending and the tacked on twist, especially when I looked back and realized that Will Graham actually did very little to stop Francis Dolarhyde. Granted, only one more body turned up after Graham got involved in the case (and arguably, Lounds’ demise was his own fault), and it can be argued that without the profiler’s involvement, another family might have been slain, but in actuality, the FBI does very little to take out Dolarhyde. He fakes his own death the first time around to get away; Graham and Crawford don’t show up until after and mistakenly assume that everything is over. Their mistake leads Dolarhyde to come back a second time where he almost kills Graham before ultimately being taken out by Molly. The thorough profile on Dolarhyde which Graham spent weeks putting together didn’t quite end up mattering, as they only secured the killer’s identity when he had started to slip.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed this book—its characters and dialogue especially. I look forward to seeing how “Hannibal” will treat this plot in the upcoming season. It’s got to be better than the 1986 version, “Manhunter,” which I thought was doing a pretty good job until about the halfway point when it seems like they rushed to finish it up, cutting and pasting scenes with haphazard care. I could have overlooked the over-the-top cheesy 80s vibe, but I couldn’t forgive the misinterpretation of Dolarhyde. The ending totally misconstrued the profile, which, to me, was kind of the whole point of the book.

This Story Really Has Nothing to Do With Being Irish

Dead Irish
by John Lescroart
p. 1989

Needing to take a little break from science fiction after my letdown with the Trilogy of Disappointment, I pounded out a quick murder mystery I’d had lying around for ages, Dead Irish, by John Lescroart, whose name I still can’t pronounce for the life of me. Dead Irish is a crime/thriller novel with a wide cast of characters revolving around the untimely death of young Irish Catholic Eddie Cochran, allegedly a suicide until the truth is slowly unraveled.

The central character in Dead Irish is Dismas Hardy, a former cop, former lawyer, [former everything in the way that only serialized private eyes can be], who currently works as a bartender for Eddie’s brother-in-law. Hardy only obliquely knew Eddie, but he is roped into investigating the young man’s death, for the sake of his young, pregnant wife, who would receive no benefits if her husband’s death were declared a suicide, and Eddie’s despairing family, who cannot believe their eldest son would take his own life.

I initially had no idea that Dismas Hardy was a serialized character. When I thought that the book was a one-off, I assumed that Hardy was investigating the death because he wanted to get into the pretty widow’s pants, which was a little tacky, considering she was pregnant with the dead man’s child and all, and also a good 15 years younger than Hardy. It wasn’t until I caught on that Dead Irish was just the first in many investigations of Hardy and the LA detectives that I realized his motives weren’t self-serving.

The fact that Dismas Hardy and his detective friend Abe Glitzky both recur in many other Lescroart novels also excused the lack of culmination to their individual storylines. A lot of threads were introduced and Lescroart didn’t really do justice to them all. The ending itself was terribly rushed, but in the context of what Dead Irish is—one in a series of neo-noir style thrillers starring a hardened ex-cop—I guess I can excuse the slapped-together ending.

I’m not overly fond of Hardy as a protagonist. Early on in the novel, one of his methods of information-gathering involves vaguely threatening dead Eddie’s teenage brother. It was mildly effective, sure, but the kid really had nothing to do with the murder and smacking him around while he was grieving was a bit unnerving, even if he was being a bit surly. At the end, when the real killer is outed, Hardy encourages him to kill himself instead of turning himself in, for no discernible reason... and he does, screwing over his detective friend, Glitzky, in the process. Hardy also shows up at a ton of crime scenes when I feel he probably doesn’t have any business being there, but it was the eighties, so maybe the LAPD didn’t care that some dude who was only a beat cop for half a minute twenty years ago is hanging around telling them what to do. Maybe they would care if they knew Hardy was handing out guns to murderers and telling them to take care of it themselves...

I feel like all of this is supposed to make me think of Hardy as something of a maverick, but I really just thought he was kind of a self-serving jerk and the LAPD were all idiots for not being able to do the legwork themselves.

I also guessed the killer after like thirty pages (of a 400 page book), but then I subscribe to the school of televised crime procedurals, in which it is always the last person you should suspect, and after you cycle through all the more obvious suspects, only then the truth will out, so really, the last person you should suspect is actually the first person you should suspect. It’s like, why else would they spend all that time on that seemingly inconsequential character if he didn’t do in the dead guy? It’s really the only thing that makes sense, from a storyteller’s point of view.

Read this book. Read another Lescroart book. Read any crime thriller at all, really. I’ve got a feeling there won’t be much variation, when all is said and done.

Blood, Sweat, and Semen: That's What Southern Boys Are Made Of

Bad City Blues
by Tim Willocks
p. 1991

Somewhere down south in a stale, sweaty bayou-adjacent Louisiana slum, a bunch of dudes engage in neo-noir charades and Tim Willocks wants us all along for the ride.

Bad City Blues is a story about some troubled men and dark family secrets and a suitcase full of stolen money and duplicitous women and any other things you’d expect from a noir-style story set in an unnamed southern city. It took a few chapters for me to get into because at first, all I could think was that this was essentially the equivalent of a romance novel, but for men. There is a lot of smut I wasn’t expecting, and it’s certainly not of the sensual, passionate variety typically found in romance novels, but rather angry, lustful sex full of self-loathing and confusion. In fact, every woman in the story has at least three sexual partners and you can bet that if one comes up in story, it will be only a paragraph or two before she’s sexualized.

The inherent misogyny in the fact that the only female characters in Bad City Blues are either sluts or prostitutes would unnerve me, but I had a really hard time taking Willocks seriously. The melodrama, the clichés, and the extreme alpha-ness of every male character in this novel were just too much for me. It felt more like overcompensation than anything. That doesn’t make the misogyny okay, it just set my brain straight to interpret this novel, which is nothing more than a blustery homage to noir fiction.

It can be fun, if you learn not to take it seriously. The characters are intense and their interaction is layered. I’ve never personally read an Elmore Leonard novel, but if his novels are anything like they are depicted in the series “Justified,” then I am wont to compare Willocks to Leonard, because reading this book felt a lot like watching an episode of “Justified,” from the antihero with a tortured past and a penchant for femme fatales, to the bumbling criminal lackeys, to the explosive and fatal finale when everything comes together.

Willocks may have a way with language and dialogue, and it was refreshing to read a story centered around characters rather than concepts, after reading so much pulp science fiction lately, but I won’t be delving into his limited repertoire any further. While I love the neo-noir genre, I can probably root out a few that don’t feel like I’m reading pornography for people who hate women.

Just Kill Me Now

Murder at the Ingham County Fair
by Richard Baldwin
p. 2009


I was directed to this novel--the latest in a mystery series by Michigan author Richard Baldwin--by 360 Mainstreet, a Saginaw-based online publication for which I occasionally write reviews. Due to the site's inclination toward presenting Michigan culture in a generally positive light, they were disinclined to publish my review the way I originally wrote it, so I wrote an alternative, laughably restrained review. Thankfully, they ended up publishing the original version regardless (you can read it here, and peruse my other reviews, if it pleases!), which is good because Richard Baldwin should not be allowed to butcher the good name of literature without proper payback.

I wish I was kidding when I say that this is the worst book I've ever read. I'm not the least bit surprised that Baldwin self-publishes. This is the unfiltered review but it's still fairly restrained...

In his 11^th self-published mystery novel, Murder at the Ingham County Fair, Michigan author Richard Baldwin presents a good old-fashioned whodunit and pays homage to his hometown through the telling of the investigation of Judge Winston Breckinridge’s murder. Leading the investigation is the astute, gentlemanly hero of Baldwin’s previous mystery novels, private detective Lou Searing, and a crafty team of diverse investigators that frequently aid him on cases.

Discounting a handy, informative paragraph regarding the real-life history of the Ingham County Fair (begun in 1855, admission was originally ten cents, a price which has no doubt increased as the number of attendees skyrocketed over the past century and a half), there is no prologue; Baldwin dives directly into the murder at the heart of the novel. The first chapter of Ingham County reads like a procedural drama, dumping exposition about the physical details of the case, a style of writing that is not repeated for the remainder of the novel. Instead, the remaining 200 pages consist primarily of dialogue, with maybe 5-10% leftover for descriptive writing.

In addition to over-reliance on dialogue, we are laden with a plethora of suspects—any one of whom has a feasible motive and conveniently no alibi—and seemingly irrelevant details—such as the Interstates each team member took on their drives or the way a suspect interviewed spells her name. If this style of storytelling was intentionally done to bewilder the reader and leave them questioning up until the very end who committed the murder, then Baldwin has succeeded, because the motive and final reveal of the culprit responsible is impossible to guess based on the clues given. Ingham County would benefit more from more showing and less telling, if the readers are at all meant to take on the duties of novice detective alongside Lou and his team.

Speaking of Lou’s team, they might serve an equally effective purpose narrating infomercials about political correctness. Lou himself is a senior citizen, as is his assistant and primary field operative Jack Kelly, a replacement for the inexplicably disabled (and adoptive mother of a Korean baby) Maggie McMillan. The fourth team member is a college student named Heather, also wheelchair-bound, who helps to modernize their investigative techniques. There is no discernable reason for either female to be wheelchair-bound, as it does not help or hinder in any way. Even Lou’s dog is handicapped, having lost one of its legs in an earlier incident with an assassin pursuing Lou that sounded much more exciting than anything that happened in Ingham County.

Despite its insistence that Lou and his team are fascinating and extraordinary, one thing that Ingham Countynot is a character-driven story. You can count on your fingers the number of personality traits attributed to all four team members, and they are usually immaterial details, such as Lou’s membership in Knights of Columbus, the Harley he owns and rarely drives, the fact that everyone orders French Vanilla lattes at a local coffee shop, and one throwaway line about Jack being a snappy dresser. The despicable murder victims are given a much broader and clearer range of personality than our investigators, leaving very little to relate to as a reader. is

It’s not even clear why Lou was brought into the case in the first place besides the simple fact that he was around when it occurred. According to Baldwin, local authorities in Michigan don’t have time to look into the murder of a high-ranking and controversial judge and would much rather rely on a local “small-time” private detective. If we had seen the authorities participate in the investigation at any time during the months it took place, Lou’s involvement would be excusable, but they never once showed up to help. It might even be easy to overlook this if what we are told about Lou’s team—that they are highly intelligent and perceptive—were true, but their techniques are nothing out of the ordinary and in fact each person relies quite heavily on the “blunt force” method of interrogation. At least half a dozen times throughout the novel, Lou or one of his teammates flat out asks a suspect, “Did you kill the judge?” as if this were at all an acceptable or reliable form of cross-examination.

Still, despite its mistakes and regrettable lack of imagery, there are parts to enjoy about Ingham County. Scattered throughout the book are illustrations by high-schooler Everett Jason Van Allsburg, which add very little to the story, but are a unique touch to the mystery novel experience. In addition, there are dozens of goodies for Michiganders to find, as Lou’s team visits places (and probably people) local to the real Ingham County, where Baldwin resides. A coffee shop called Bestsellers gets face time, as does a restaurant called Blondies, and even Tigers’ pitcher Justin Verlander gets his named dropped. No doubt there are a lot of parallels to Baldwin’s every day life to be found in Lou Searing’s routine. Both are married, write mysteries on the side, and even own a cat named Millie. It’s nice to see these regional details show up, proof that the author is proud to represent his hometown. Disappointingly, the titular fair itself played only a minor part in the murder, and is completely forgotten halfway through.

The mystery itself remains as such throughout the entirety of the book. For better or for worse, there’s no way to determine Winston Breckinridge’s killer until shortly before the culprit is arrested. This is definitely a whodunit that keeps you guessing, so if you’re the type of reader who likes to be kept on their toes and run through all the possibilities, then this may be a good mystery novel for you. If, however, you are looking for a story with vibrant, well-drawn-out characters, it may be necessary to read more of Baldwin’s series to paint the full picture. As it is, Murder at the Ingham County Fair presents only abstract figures revolving around an even more intangible landscape. It may not be clear who they are, why they are there, or how they are doing it, but they get the job done.