The thriller author Ashley Dyer—a partnership between writer Margaret Murphy and forensics expert Helen Pepper—examine Thomas Harris’s seminal serial killer novel, The Silence of the Lambs (1988).
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The Silence of the Lambs as Literature
(From Margaret Murphy, the “write” arm of Ashley Dyer)
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Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs has spawned generations of (fictional) serial killers. First published in 1988, it was swiftly followed in 1990 by Patricia Cornwell’s Postmortem. James Patterson’s Kiss the Girls and Richard Montanari’s Deviant Way both appeared in 1995, and Jeffery Deaver pitched in with The Bone Collector, his first Lincoln Rhyme story, in 1997. I toyed with the idea writing a serial killer thriller myself in the late 90s, but my former agent nixed it: “The serial killer novel is dead,” she said, with a finality which brooked no argument. Yet the serial killer thriller remains in wickedly good health, and The Silence of the Lambs has lodged itself in the heart of the popular psyche like no other.
Harris deals brilliantly with everything from forensic psychology to autopsy scenes, combining science and forensic detection with enviable inventiveness and creative genius. He plunges right into the action without filling in too much detail, respecting his readers’ intelligence and making us active participants in the story from page one. But many novels do all of these things. Consider then, the wisdom in every scene, his profound insights into the nature of goodness and evil. But superb writing does not guarantee success, nor does it secure the writer a place in the list of all-time greats. So what does this novel have which makes it stand out against all comers?
Could its enduring appeal be that Lecter was the first of its type? (I haven’t forgotten Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley series, but Tom Ripley kills where it’s expedient to do so—without conscience for sure, but not for pleasure—and he avoids notice where he can. In contrast, Lecter relishes the game.) Even so, being the first doesn’t guarantee immortality—and can be a passport to obscurity (who today remembers Bell Labs’s 1964 Picturephone—a stylish precursor to the iPhone?). Okay, so, it must be Hannibal Lecter’s exceptional qualities that make Silence of the Lambs uniquely compelling even after thirty-plus years. He is, after all, one of a kind: a brilliant psychiatrist, polymath, serial killer—and cannibal. But each of the authors above, and many more since, have created memorable, skin-chilling serial murderers…
The difference for me lies in how Lecter is involved in the investigation. Serial killers generally feature in a more conventional way as the quarry of a more-or-less conventional detective. Harris, on the other hand, begins from a very different premise—he sets a thief to catch a thief. Jack Crawford, head of the Behavioral Science Unit, sends FBI trainee Clarice Starling on a routine errand to ask Dr Lecter to fill in the BSU’s “serial killer questionnaire.” It’s a ruse—Crawford wants Lecter’s insights into the FBI’s current serial killer, Buffalo Bill. Lecter finds Starling interesting; he obliges and insinuates himself into the investigation, becoming both Clarice’s mentor and tormentor.
Silence is stuffed with quotable passages and startling glimpses into the human psyche but, working on and off as a creative writing tutor for over twenty years, I’ve used one short scene from chapter 3 as an exemplar again and again. It begins with Starling’s greeting: “Dr Lecter.” And ends, “His eyes held Starling whole.” This extract, just 151 words long, is laden with portent, and sets up the entire relationship between Lecter and Starling. Arriving at the Baltimore asylum where Lecter is held, Starling is already primed to meet a monster. Jack Crawford has told her that former FBI agent Will Graham “looks like damn Picasso drew him” because of Lecter. As she makes the metaphorical descent into hell alongside sleazy asylum administrator Dr. Chilton, he describes how Lecter broke a nurse’s jaw “to get at her tongue.” Finally, Barney, Lecter’s warder, adds his litany of dire warnings. When they meet face-to-face Clarice is so thoroughly frightened it’s no wonder she thinks Lecter’s gaze hums.
Alone, Lecter might appear an archetype—almost a parody—of a gothic villain, but Clarice Starling’s calm presence humanizes him for the reader.Alone, Lecter might appear an archetype—almost a parody—of a gothic villain, but Clarice Starling’s calm presence humanizes him for the reader. A master of manipulation, Harris seduces the reader into identifying with Lecter by having Clarice identify with him, seeing in his hands and arms, “a wiry strength like her own.” Subtly, oh, so cleverly in that short, deft passage, Harris establishes a rapport between the two that will resonate and deepen throughout the narrative.
Later in the same chapter, Lecter demonstrates his intelligence, wit and cruelty. He sees a lot, but Starling sees too—right through his bullshit (a term she uses several times in internal monologue when men try to “educate” her). Lecter is disdainful of the BSU’s “simplistic” psychological approach to murderous psychopathy; he haughtily rebuffs Starling’s fumbled attempt to persuade him to fill in her questionnaire, initially with a suave, “Oh, Officer Starling, do you think you can dissect me with this blunt little tool?” and soon after, with godlike self-aggrandizement: “Nothing happened to me—I happened.” Knowing that Lecter is toying with her, Clarice has the skill to use his arrogance against him, as well as the self-possession to hold back when Lecter goes wrong in his assessment of her. Instead, she bides her time, seeing through his grandiosity to his human frailty. Putting the reader in Starling’s “cheap shoes” as she faces the monster, Harris enables us to peek behind the mask to the man. It is this interplay between Starling and Lecter which gives the novel an edge like no other and establishes The Silence of the Lambs as the best of the best.
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The Silence of the Lambs as a Procedural Study
(From Helen Pepper, forensic adviser to Ashley Dyer)
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When Margaret suggested that we look at The Silence of the Lambs I wasn’t keen. I don’t read much fiction; I’d never read the novel, or seen the film, and I felt it wasn’t my sort of book. “You’ll love it, it’s fantastic!” she said. I replied with an unconvinced, “Hm . . .” As usual, she was absolutely right: I loved this book; the plot is clever, the writing is tight, and I really cared about the characters. In fact, I’ll admit to feeling a little silly not to have read it before.
My brief was to critique the forensic and investigative content, and when I started reading I was initially a little irritated to discover similarities between the fictional killer, “Buffalo Bill,” and real-life serial Killer Ed Gein. But as I read on I saw that Harris, while giving a nod to real life cases, had created his own quite unique story. After that it was fun to spot references to other serial killers: Bundy’s “arm in a cast” pick-up technique, for one. In the novel, Buffalo Bill’s murderous career began, like Ed Kemper’s, with the murder of his grandparents; there is even a hint of H.H. Holmes’s “Murder Hotel” in the labyrinthine rooms of Bill’s basement.
Silence of the Lambs was first published in 1988 and for me as a former CSI, it’s like taking a stroll down memory lane. The stand-out feature is actually conspicuous by its absence—DNA profiling is not mentioned anywhere in the novel as an investigatory tool. Which isn’t so surprising, since the first conviction for murder using “genetic fingerprinting”, as it was then known, was in the UK in 1987—only a year before publication of Silence of the Lambs. In that same year, Orange County Circuit Court in Florida saw the first US conviction (of serial rapist, Tommy Lee Andrews), but the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) wasn’t in fact set up until the 1990s. It’s hard now to imagine any contemporary police procedural novel where DNA retrieval and analysis isn’t at least attempted. That said, while a DNA profile might have helped to expedite identification of the victims in The Silence of the Lambs, I couldn’t find a single instance in the story where DNA could have been used to identify Buffalo Bill, proving that while DNA is a useful tool, it isn’t always available!
Most of the forensic techniques are accurate, and although it might seem odd that Jack Crawford would take rookie Clarice with him to fingerprint a body, it doesn’t stretch credibility too far, since the FBI didn’t have their own CSIs until the early 1990s, and relied on “borrowing” staff from local police departments. But when Clarice finds the envelope of photos in victim Catherine Martin’s room, she sniffs it and notes that it hasn’t been “fumed” for fingerprints. In fact, the technique to find latent fingerprints on a paper envelope would involve dipping or spraying it with the chemical ninhydrin. It is highly toxic and would need to be applied in a fume cupboard in a laboratory, and then left to dry, so it would never have been tested in Catherine’s room, anyway.
Clarice’s expertise in fingerprinting bodies was apparently acquired in her work as a “lab wretch” at the FBI’s Washington Lab. She says one of her tasks was to retrieve fingerprints from hands sent in the mail to the lab. In the UK, the disarticulation of bodies and separation of remains is highly frowned upon, and instead, a CSI would to go to the mortuary, take the fingerprints and then send them for identification—much as Clarice does in the novel.
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A final word from Margaret Murphy: Harris’s background research into FBI behavioral science, forensics, psychology and—crucially—his ingenious use of that research in his writing, makes this novel an object lesson in the craft.
