Yesterday I finished rereading "Red Dragon" by Thomas Harris. I caught part of the original movie, "Manhunter", on TV Saturday night, which made me want to both watch the remake (I love Edward Norton!) and reread the book. It's a great book, really creepy. Dr. Lector just plays a very small role in it; it's mostly about Francis Dolarhyde and Will Graham. I like the Graham character in this book, how he struggles to understand the killers he chases, why he feels so close to them. Both the movies actually follow the book very closely, which is what makes them so good, I guess. I loved "Silence of the Lambs" (both the book and the movie), and the book "Hannibal". The movie didn't impress me very much. I loved the ending in the book; I thought it was perfect, though I understand the controversy and why they changed it for the movie, but I don't like it. "Red Dragon" is a good one, though, and I think I read somewhere that Harris based the character of Graham on John Douglas, the famous FBI profiler. I've read all of his books, too.
Moving on to something new! "Top of the Heap" by Erle Stanley Gardner is one of those "Hard Case Crime Series" books, where they reprint a lot of crime noir stuff that's older and out of print, like this one. I love Gardner's "Perry Mason" series (speaking of which, I haven't reread any of those in a while! It might be time...) and this one was pretty good. It was convoluted and complicated, like all good detective fiction usually is. I really liked the character of Donald Lam. He was interesting, and a man's man without being obnoxious about it.
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