The Silence of the Lambs

The Silence of the Lambs is a 1988 psychological horror novel by Thomas Harris. Published August 29, it is the sequel to Harris's 1981 novel Red Dragon and both novels feature the cannibalistic serial killer and brilliant psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter. This time, however, he is pitted against FBI trainee Clarice Starling as she works to solve the case of the "Buffalo Bill" serial killer. The film adaptation directed by Jonathan Demme was released in 1991 to widespread critical acclaim and box office success. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Anthony Hopkins won for Best Actor as Lecter. Synopsis Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee, is asked to carry out an errand by Jack Crawford, the head of the FBI division that draws up psychological profiles of serial killers. Starling is to present a questionnaire to the brilliant forensic psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer, Hannibal Lecter. Lecter is serving nine consecutive life sentences in a Maryland mental institution for a series of murders. Crawford's real intention, however, is to try to solicit Lecter's assistance in the hunt for a serial killer dubbed "Buffalo Bill", whose M.O. involves kidnapping large women, starving them for up to two weeks, killing and skinning them, and dumping the remains in nearby rivers. The nickname was started by Kansas City Homicide as a sick joke that "he likes to skin his humps." Although initially dismissive of Starling's questions, Lector is offended when another inmate flings his semen at Starling, and as an apology he predicts that Buffalo Bill's next victim will be scalped, and tells her to locate a car owned by Benjamin Rapspail, a former patient whom Lector eventually murdered. When Starling locates the car in a storage unit, she discovers a severed head preserved in a jar, which Lector later identifies as Raspail's lover Klaus. Throughout the investigation, Starling periodically returns to Lecter in search of information, and the two form a strange relationship in which he offers her cryptic clues in return for information about her troubled and bleak childhood as an orphan. Starling must also contend with Dr. Frederick Chilton, the asylum's administrator and Lecter's self-styled nemesis, who makes sexual advances at Starling and attempts to insert himself into the investigation for his own gain.