It’s one of the most recognizable images in the history of film: Anthony Hopkins as the cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter, wearing a face mask and staring out with intense blue eyes, murder likely on his mind. Hopkins won an Academy Award for his performance in The Silence of the Lambs, Jonathan Demme’s 1991 film based on Thomas Harris’ bestselling thriller, and both book and movie are today considered modern classics.

Lecter had debuted in a previous book, Red Dragon, as a supporting character; that book formed the basis for Michael Mann’s film Manhunter, in which Brian Cox played the killer with a taste for human organs. But The Silence of the Lambs brought Lecter to a wide audience, and he went on to appear in two more books, Hannibaland Hannibal Rising, as well as three other films and a well-regarded television series.

Brian Raftery was faintly aware of The Silence of the Lambs novel as a young teenager, but it was a Rolling Stone review of the film—which he read covertly in his eighth-grade Spanish class—that caught his eye. “This is about a guy who eats people, and it’s actually good?” he recalls. “I was probably too scared to see it in the theater, or maybe my parents didn’t let me see it. I didn’t see it until it came out on VHS in ’92 or so, but it completely floored me.”

Raftery has turned his fascination with the character into a new book, Hannibal Lecter: A Life (Simon & Schuster, Feb. 10), which examines the fictional killer through his appearances on page and screen. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus called the biography “a fascinating book, perhaps best enjoyed with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.” (If you’ve seen The Silence of the Lambs, you’ll get it.)

Raftery talked to Kirkus about his book via Zoom from his home in Burbank, California. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What made you decide to write a book about Hannibal Lecter?

I was thinking about doing a book just on Silence of the Lambs, and I emailed my agent that idea two weeks before Covid, so I kind of forgot about it. Later, I went to a screening in L.A. of Manhunter with Michael Mann in attendance, and the number of people who were so fired up for that movie made me realize just how strong these films are and how strong this character is still. Then my book editor, Sean Manning, said, “Hey, what about a book about Hannibal Lecter?” The real reason I wanted to do it is because some of my favorite showbiz biographies—like the Dean Martin book by Nick Tosches, Mark Harris’ Mike Nichols book, Sam Wasson’s Fosse book—in addition to being well reported and being about fascinating people, let you look at various parts of the entertainment industry. With Hannibal Lecter, I could write about the publishing industry, the movie industry, news media, true crime, and pop culture. It seemed like a very fun way to write about a lot of things that interest me in one book.

What do you think makes Hannibal Lecter such an iconic character that has captured the imaginations of people who’ve read the books and seen the movies?

In the case of the early books, Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, what's interesting to me is for the most part he’s still just a supporting character. You learn just enough to be thoroughly creeped out by him. He’s used very sparingly in those books, and in the first two film adaptations too: If you look at Manhunter, Brian Cox has maybe three scenes, and in The Silence of the Lambs, Anthony Hopkins has maybe 25 minutes.

You always wanted more, but there’s also a big-picture reason, which is that, yes, he eats people, yes, he’s bad, but he’s very smart and he’s a very good therapist. In the exchanges between him and [FBI agent] Clarice Starling, it’s like the first time anyone in her life has ever tried to understand her. Granted, he’s doing it partly to help himself escape, but he’s very intelligent and insightful. Compared to the real-life serial killers who are these degenerate scumbags who have nothing interesting to say, despite what pop culture wants us to believe, Hannibal Lecter is almost an aspirational figure.

When you conceived of the book, did the fact that Thomas Harris is notoriously media shy give you any pause?

It did. I knew he was not going to talk to me, and I didn’t want to do a write-around. I always felt that if you write about someone, you’ve got to make sure you talk to everyone and get everything officially. And then 10 or 15 years ago, I read this book called Van Halen Rising, which is a biography of Van Halen where the writer, Greg Renoff, didn’t get anyone [currently with] the band on the record, and it’s one of the most vivid musical biographies I’ve ever read. He interviewed every other person. I thought, If I could find every single person who’s alive and find any archival material, that might be enough. But also, the fact that Thomas Harris hasn’t given more than three interviews or so in the last 50 years is great, because he’s a mysterious figure in the book. He’s always lurking somewhere in the book, and I don’t want to compare him to Hannibal Lecter, but he has a similar elusiveness to him.

And I lucked out that Jonathan Demme has his papers at the University of Michigan. The staff there is amazing, and they let me go through all his correspondence from Silence of the Lambs. Harris and Demme were communicating quite a bit, and I was able to find some of that stuff, which was really helpful. Anything I found from Harris, every single little thing, I tried to use, because there was so little of it. I would find a two-sentence fax, and I felt like I’d landed in Valhalla for a day. This was a book that was written with the help of some extraordinary librarians across the board. Nothing has made me appreciate the value of a good research library more than working on this.

You write about Donald Trump invoking Hannibal Lecter several times on the campaign trail. What was your reaction to that?

When I signed the book contract, he had only mentioned him once or twice, and I thought, Well, that’s strange. And then shortly after I signed the contract, it was becoming a thing. He started saying it all the time, to the point where friends no longer had to text me. Part of me was like, I guess I’m clearly on the right path by thinking this character still has some cultural attraction because the president is talking about him in Wildwood, New Jersey, and people were hooting. Trump is such a pop-culture vacuum. He loves catchphrases and references, and he’s old enough that he would’ve seen Silence of the Lambs in his prime moviegoing years. It still doesn’t make any sense to me, and to be honest, I don’t think Trump entirely knew what he was saying either. But look, I was happy not to be the only person in America who was obsessing over Hannibal Lecter at that point. I guess Trump and I had that in common.

Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.