HANNIBAL RISING

Hannibal Lecter fans rejoice--his origins and ghastly early life are now available for your gore-hungry ears. Read and even performed by its author, HANNIBAL RISING is a dark, grisly yet elegant tale, which may generate some sympathy for one of fiction's most twisted killers. Harris's deep Southern accent, steeped in honeysuckle, hound dogs, molasses, and academia, is an odd match for some of the material, though his dead-on German and French accents (the story is set in the late days of WWII and concerns Lecter's childhood) redeem the recording from becoming a sonorous song of the South. One can't say Harris overplays or underplays; he delivers a creditable performance that does justice to his modern macabre classic. D.J.B. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB/ MAR 07]