The ubiquity of pulp-novel juggernaut Hannibal Lecter may signify many things to cult-stud scholars, but the phenom is simple to read: We use the serial-killer-as-mastermind myth to impose order upon criminal mayhem. Imagining the killer as an oddly rational, cosmology-diddling genius makes random homicide decipherable, and thus less threatening than the acts of those scattershot impulse machines who fit the actual serial-killer profile. Our love for Lecter echoes the Germanic yen in the '20s and '30s for criminal underworlds arranged like legit governments and businesses. Hannibal Lecter is a bedtime story, a Mabuse-like brainiac about as... More >>>