Editing Hannibal Lecter (section)

===Novels===
====''Red Dragon''====
In the backstory of the 1981 novel ''[[Red Dragon (novel)|Red Dragon]]'', [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] profiler [[Will Graham (character)|Will Graham]] interviews Lecter about one of his patients who was murdered by a serial killer, before intuiting that Lecter is the culprit; he sees the antique medical diagram "[[Wound Man]]" in Lecter's office, and remembers that the victim suffered the same injuries depicted in the drawing. Realizing that Graham is on to him, Lecter creeps up behind Graham and stabs him with a [[linoleum knife]], nearly disemboweling him.

Graham survives, but is so traumatized by the incident that he takes early retirement from the FBI. Lecter is charged with a series of nine murders, but is found [[not guilty by reason of insanity]]. He is institutionalized in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane under the care of Dr. [[Frederick Chilton]], a pompous, incompetent psychologist whom he despises, and who subjects him to a series of petty cruelties.

Some years later, Graham comes out of retirement and consults Lecter in order to catch another serial killer, [[Francis Dolarhyde]], known by the nickname "the Tooth Fairy". Through the [[classifieds]] of a [[Tabloid journalism|tabloid]] called ''The National Tattler'', Lecter provides Dolarhyde with Graham's home address; Dolarhyde later uses this information to break into Graham's home, stab him in the face, and threaten his family before Graham's wife Molly shoots him dead. At the end of the novel, Lecter sends Graham a letter, saying that he hopes Graham "won't be very ugly".

====''The Silence of the Lambs''====
In the 1988 sequel ''[[The Silence of the Lambs (novel)|The Silence of the Lambs]]'', Lecter assists FBI agent-in-training [[Clarice Starling]] in catching a serial killer, Jame Gumb, known by the nickname "[[Buffalo Bill (character)|Buffalo Bill]]". Lecter is fascinated by Starling, and they form an unusual relationship in which he provides her with a [[Offender profiling|profile]] of the killer and his ''[[modus operandi]]'' in exchange for details about her unhappy childhood.

Lecter had previously met Gumb, the former lover of his patient (and eventual victim) Benjamin Raspail. He does not reveal this information directly, instead giving Starling vague clues to help her figure it out for herself. In return for Lecter's assistance, the FBI and Chilton arrange for him to be transferred to a federal institution with better living conditions.

Lecter escapes while in transit, however, killing and mutilating his guards and using one of their faces as a mask to fool police and paramedics before killing the latter and escaping. While in hiding, he writes one letter to Starling wishing her well, a second to Barney (his primary orderly at the asylum), thanking him for his courteous treatment, and a third to Chilton, promising gruesome revenge; Chilton disappears soon afterward.

====''Hannibal''====
In the third novel, 1999's ''[[Hannibal (Harris novel)|Hannibal]]'', Lecter lives in a [[palazzo]] in [[Florence]], [[Italy]], and works as a [[museum]] [[curator]] under the alias "Dr. Fell". One of Lecter's two surviving victims, [[Mason Verger]]&mdash;a wealthy, [[Sadistic personality disorder|sadistic]] [[Pedophilia|pedophile]] whom Lecter had brutalized during a court-ordered therapy session, leaving him a horrifically disfigured [[quadriplegic]]&mdash;offers a huge reward for anyone who apprehends Lecter, whom he intends to feed to [[wild boar]]s specially bred for the purpose.

Verger enlists the help of Rinaldo Pazzi, a disgraced Italian police inspector, and Paul Krendler, a corrupt [[United States Department of Justice|Justice Department]] official and Starling's boss. Lecter kills Pazzi and returns to the United States to escape Verger's [[Sardinia]]n henchmen, only to be captured. Starling follows them, intent on apprehending Lecter personally, and is injured in a gunfight with Verger's henchmen. Lecter escapes, thanks to Starling's help, and persuades Verger's younger sister Margot&mdash;his former patient, whom Verger had [[Child molestation|molested]] and [[rape]]d years earlier&mdash;to kill her brother, promising to take the blame.

Lecter rescues the wounded Starling and takes her to his rented house on the Chesapeake shore to treat her, subjecting her to a regimen of [[psychoactive drug]]s in the course of therapy sessions to help her heal from her childhood trauma and her pent-up anger at the injustices of the world. He considers whether his long-dead younger sister Mischa may somehow be able to live again through Starling. One day, he invites her to a formal dinner where the guest and first course is Krendler, whose brain they consume together. On this night, Starling refuses to let her personality be subsumed, telling Lecter that Mischa's memory can live within him. She then offers him her breast, and they become lovers.

Three years later, former orderly Barney, who had treated Lecter with respect while he was incarcerated in Baltimore, sees Lecter and Starling entering the [[Teatro Colón]] opera house in [[Buenos Aires]]. Fearing for his life, Barney leaves Buenos Aires immediately, never to return. The reader then learns that Lecter and Starling are living together in an "exquisite" [[Beaux-Arts architecture|Beaux Arts]] mansion, where they employ servants and engage in activities such as learning new languages and dancing together and building their own respective [[Method of loci|memory palaces]], and is told that "Sex is a splendid structure they add to every day", that the psychoactive drugs "have had no part in their lives for a long time", and that Lecter is "satisfied" with the fact that Mischa cannot return.

====''Hannibal Rising''====
Harris wrote a 2006 prequel, ''[[Hannibal Rising]]'', after film producer [[Dino De Laurentiis]] (who owned the cinematic rights to the Lecter character) announced an intended film project depicting Lecter's childhood and development into a serial killer with or without Harris' help. Harris would also write the film's screenplay.

The novel chronicles Lecter's early life, from his birth into a family of the [[Lithuanian nobility]] in 1933, to being orphaned, along with his beloved younger sister Mischa, in 1944 when a [[Nazi]] [[Stuka]] bomber attacks a [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] [[tank]] in front of their forest hideaway. Shortly thereafter, he and Mischa are captured by a band of [[Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy|Nazi collaborators]], who murder and cannibalize Mischa before her brother's eyes; Lecter later learns that the collaborators also fed him Mischa's remains.

Irreparably traumatized, Lecter escapes from the deserters and wanders through the forest, dazed and unable to speak. He is found and taken back to his family's old castle, which had been converted into a Soviet [[orphanage]], where he is bullied by the other children and [[Child abuse|abused]] by the dean.

He is adopted by his uncle Robert and Robert's [[Japanese people|Japanese]] wife, Lady Murasaki, who nurses him back to health and teaches him to speak again. Robert dies shortly after adopting Lecter, who forms a close, pseudo-romantic relationship with Murasaki. During this time he also shows great intellectual aptitude, entering medical school at a young age and distinguishing himself.

Despite his seemingly comfortable life, Lecter is consumed by a savage obsession with avenging Mischa's death. He kills for the first time as a teenager, using a [[katana]] [[sword]] beheading a [[Racism|racist]] fishmonger who insulted Murasaki. He then methodically tracks down, [[torture]]s, and murders each of the men who had killed his sister. In the process of taking his revenge, he forsakes his relationship with Murasaki and seemingly loses all traces of his humanity. The novel ends with Lecter being accepted to [[Johns Hopkins Hospital]].