Hannibal

What happens when you create a fictional character who transcends the written page to enter the rarefied domain of pop culture iconism? The Thriller industry-standard benchmark for virtually every grotesque,ghoulish,malevolent and sadistic killer every aspiring thriller writer(and quite a few old hands) trot out ever so often?
If you're Thomas Harris, you eschew the temptation to bang out yet another Hannibal Lecter psycho thrill-fest and take the character in an entirely different and increasingly bizarre direction.
All criticisms against Harris' move to bring Lecter front and centre are justified. The good doctor loses much of his allure when he's allowed to roam free and his homicidal nature given a motivation(one explored in more detail in Hannibal Rising, reviewed here) and you miss the Lecter/ Clarice interplay as they only meet much, much later in this lengthy book. And the Florence section does drag on.
But credit goes to Harris for refusing to saturate an already over-populated field with yet another by-the-numbers Hunt, Chase and Confront psycho-thriller. Instead we get a dizzying cocktail of Grand Guignol, Revenge Thriller and Love Story all buttressed with Harris' intricate mastery of Criminal Investigative procedures and Forensic Science.
The much reviled ending goes over much better upon a second reading and you realise the Lecter/Starling relationship and where it was headed was foreshadowed way back in The Silence Of The Lambs.
I'll probably have a Lecter-thon of reading all 4 Hannibal books sometime in the distant future, until then there's always the anticipation that some writer is going to best Harris at the thriller game. But I won't be holding my breath.