Hailed by critics as “gruesome, graphic, and all too realistic,” Red Dragon by Thomas Harris was first published in 1981 and marked a turning point in the way crime novels were written.

The first novel in Harris’s widely acclaimed Hannibal series, Red Dragon added a sense of realism to the crime novel while injecting it with a heavy dose of horror. Harris took criminology classes to prepare for the novel, while working closely with FBI Behavioral Science agents. His extensive research was poured into creating one of the most iconic villains in history: Hannibal Lecter.

In Red Dragon, former FBI profiler Will Graham comes out of retirement to apprehend a serial killer known as “The Tooth Fairy,” but to do so he must enlist the help of Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer with whom he has a dark past.

Harris writes his villains with a profound complexity. This, combined with his attention to the detail of FBI and police operations, added harrowing realism to his novel, and to the genre itself. The success of Red Dragon would lead to two sequels and a prequel in the Hannibal series.