The Silence of the Lambs

⚖The case for it

Two flaws first. The killer Starling tracks is drawn so his menace leans on old, ugly assumptions about people who don't fit their assigned gender, and 1988 let that pass; we can't. Lecter arrives worn thin by every knockoff since. Read Harris regardless, because Clarice carries the thing. A working-class trainee gets taken apart by the most exacting mind she'll ever sit across from, and each answer he trades her costs a private piece she can't get back. The title names that toll, and it still lands.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Lecter, the refined genius-cannibal, is a fine invention that has since hardened into cliché through Harris's own sequels and a thousand imitations. The deeper trouble is Buffalo Bill, the killer Starling hunts: he is built on a queasy conflation of gender nonconformity with monstrosity that has aged into something the book must answer for. The procedure around them is sturdy pulp.

— the honest librarian