With a new book on the horizon, journalist and Thomas Harris superfan Tom Tivnan investigates the writer’s legacy and how he has dominated the crime-thriller genre, from print to screen. He created one of our greatest anti-heroes, Hannibal Lecter. It is the third in his series featuring Dr. How Thomas Harris defined a genre and created fiction’s most likeable villain. “I was making room for something else,” Harris says. Hannibal is a psychological horror novel by American author Thomas Harris, published in 1999. Harris wouldn’t rule out writing more books about Hannibal but said it was a relief to get some distance from him. As my grandmother used to say, ‘Too much is plenty.’” “The audience had had enough of it,” Janklow says. (Harris says he hasn’t seen it but plans to binge-watch it when he has time.)Įven Harris’ literary agent, Morton Janklow, saw signs of fan fatigue. The allusion was apparently lost on some readers.)Ī television adaptation, Hannibal, developed a cult following but was cancelled by NBC after three seasons. (Harris says that’s because he wrote some of the exchanges between Hannibal and his aunt, Lady Murasaki, in the poetic style of the Heian period, as an homage to the 11th-century Japanese novel The Tale of Genji. Some critics panned the book as a crass attempt to squeeze more material out of a fading franchise and noted that Harris’ once supple dialogue seemed stiff and affected. In 2006, Harris’ publisher ordered a first printing of 1.5 million copies for Hannibal Rising, but the novel only sold around 300,000 hardcover copies, according to NPD BookScan. Readers’ enthusiasm, however, started to dissipate.

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