Fortunately, the reader is spared of much of the cannibalistic stuff, except for an elaborate cooking class towards the close of the book on some brainy matters. There is Clarice Starling, an FBI agent, whose single-minded pursuit of killers and successful captures fail to exactly endear herself to some of her superiors and hence is in disgrace.

   However, she is the one who manages to track down the killer and ends up as his companion. So far so good. The main problem with the novel is that it leaves several things unexplained. There is this oh so clever serial killer who seem to have got access to all the riches in the world. May be he chose his victims carefully, killing only those loaded with wealth.

   Then again, in between bumping off all and sundry who happen to cross his path, the good doctor Hannibal Lecter (yes, that´s his name) finds time to delve deep into arts, history and what not. In fact, we meet him for the first time as curator of a museum in Florence, a position which he gets by simply killing his predecessor.

   The reader keeps meeting one revolting character after another. There is Mason Verger, a rich scoundrel who gets pleasure from torturing orphans, his dyke sister and ultimately we find that the only decent characters are Starling and Dr. Lecter.

   I loved the part where Dr Lecter overcomes the pain of torture by "going into his mental palace", quite a Yogic feat that one.

   I think the book should have ended with the killing of Mason. The next 40 pages or so seem so unnecessary. But then, this is one of the few works where evil sort of triumphs over evil, may be that is the way it is with the real world. None of us are exactly innocent, are we?