**An ingenious, masterfully written novel, Thomas Harris's The Silence
of the Lambs is a classic of suspense and storytelling and the basis
for the Oscar award-winning horror film starring Jodie Foster as Clarice
Starling and Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
**
A serial murderer known only by a grotesquely apt nickname--Buffalo
Bill--is stalking particular women. He has a purpose, but no one can
fathom it, for the bodies are discovered in different states. Clarice
Starling, a young trainee at the F.B.I. Academy, is surprised to be
summoned by Jack Crawford, Chief of the Bureau's Behavioral Science
section. Her assignment: to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant
psychiatrist and grisly killer now kept under close watch in the
Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Lecter's insight
into the minds of murderers could help track and capture Buffalo Bill.
Smart and attractive, Starling is shaken to find herself in a strange,
intense relationship with the acutely perceptive Lecter. His cryptic
clues--about Buffalo Bill and about her--launch Clarice on a search
that every reader will find startling, harrowing, and totally
compelling.