The other Hannibal on my shelves is a historical novel by Ross Leckie, and the other book of Leckie’s I have is The Gourmet's Companion. Harris's Hannibal however hovers between horror, highbrow and humour, giving the reader an unsatisfactorily fairytale ending - Clarice Starling is a cop, dammit, and Hannibal Lecter for all his culture and urbanity is not only a murderer but one who murders because very largely he feels like it - and they're not supposed to end up in a loving relationship. In the last resort then Harris is refusing to give the reader what the reader thinks they want. It isn't a cop thriller Harris is writing, no matter what the reader may think to be reading, and Harris feels under no obligation to provide the 'death in a hail of bullets' ending that the cop thriller genre requires as one of its cliches. The brain-eating scene was funny, though. Maybe that's the problem. It's all so Grand Guignol and overdone that it loses any sense of reality. [the film changed the ending, having her under sedation and having alerted her colleagues to come after her if she doesn't return].