After having read the amazing Red Dragon followed by the subliminal Silence of the Lambs I felt that I was reading a book where Harris had tried to make a fast buck for the sake of continuity and Hollywood. Hannibal was well below his previous high standards. As a plot line it was so far fetched as to be ludicrous with the character of Mason Verger being not frightening enough to be a fair adversary to Lecter. Lecter himself has been turned into an almost lovable old rogue and Harris has taken away all the greatness which he built up with his first two books. This has resulted in an ending that is neither scary nor believable and a book that is almost a pastiche of the horror genre.