Cari Mora: How the new thriller by Thomas Harris silences those lambs

‘Cari Mora’ is not only Harris’s first novel since 2006, it’s his first in four decades not to feature Hannibal Lecter. However, cannibalism remains a central fascination for the author. As MM Owen declares, the universe is forever dining on itself, but figures such as Clarice Starling and Cari Mora want to interrupt the meal

A ghost at the cannibal feast: Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in 1991’s ‘The Silence of the Lambs’, which won five Oscars (Rex)

In his “perfectly natural history” of cannibalism, the zoologist Bill Schutt takes until page one to reference Hannibal Lecter eating a census-taker’s liver with some fava beans and a big Amarone. Lecter might be literature’s most famous serial killer; he is without doubt its most famous cannibal. Lecter’s creator, Thomas Harris, recently published Cari Mora – his first novel in 13 years, and his first in 44 years not to feature the character made famous by an unblinking, enunciating Anthony Hopkins. And yet: despite Lecter’s absence in Cari Mora, the cannibalism persists. We meet Mr Imran, “a large, impassive man with a cauliflower ear”. A character recalls that Imran is “a biter”, and “could not always help it”. At the end of the chapter, sat in his car, Imran eats a human kidney, raw.

Lecter is absent, and yet here he lingers, a ghost at the cannibal feast. Why? Why can’t Harris help but include a glimpse of this dark appetite? Because at the core of Harris’s hugely popular horror fiction has always been a vision of the cosmos as fundamentally self-devouring. As Schutt outlines, cannibalism occurs across “the entire animal kingdom”.

It is common among invertebrates, fish, and reptiles, and it is observable in many mammals, including our closest cousins, chimpanzees. Such cannibalism generally occurs for reasons “that make perfect sense from an evolutionary standpoint: reducing competition, as a component of sexual behaviour, or an aspect of parental care.” (On parental care: if you want nightmares, go and google how the mother black lace-weaver spider feeds her young.)