Saturday, October 23
2–4 pm EDT
Taught via Zoom by Harold Schechter

PLEASE NOTE: The meeting will also be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time.

“Subtle, horrific and splendid, the best book I have read in a long time.” —writer Roald Dahl

Today, join us for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take a deep dive into Thomas Harris' classic psychological horror novel The Silence of the Lambs (adapted into an academy award-winning film) with renowned true crime writer Harold Schechter.

A serial murderer known only by a grotesquely apt nickname—Buffalo Bill—is stalking particular women. He has a purpose, but no one can fathom it, for the bodies are discovered in different states. Clarice Starling, a young trainee at the F.B.I. Academy, is surprised to be summoned by Jack Crawford, Chief of the Bureau's Behavioral Science section. Her assignment: to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist and grisly killer now kept under close watch in the Baltimore StateHospital for the Criminally Insane. Lecter's insight into the minds of murderers could help track and capture Buffalo Bill.

Smart and attractive, Starling is shaken to find herself in a strange, intense relationship with the acutely perceptive Lecter. His cryptic clues—about Buffalo Bill and about her—launch Clarice on a search that every reader will find startling, harrowing, and totally compelling.

An ingenious, masterfully written novel, The Silence of the Lambs is a classic of suspense and storytelling.

Harold Schechter’s essays on crime, psychopathology and media violence have appeared in many newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the International Herald Tribune. He has written for network television (Law & Order, The Cosby Mysteries) and been featured as an expert on PBS’ History Detectives, as well as various shows on cable channels, including Investigation Discovery, A & E Biography, and Court TV. Among his more than thirty published books are a series of historical true-crime narratives about America’s most infamous serial killers, several encyclopedic works (The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers, The Serial Killers Files, Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of), and an anthology of American true crime writing published by the Library of America. He is also the editor of the Kent State University Press True Crime History Series. His most recent book is The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, The Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation (New Harvest), a nonfiction account “as gripping as the cleverest Golden Age mystery,” in the words of the Wall Street Journal.