Synopsis
Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee, is asked to carry out an errand by Jack Crawford, the head of the FBI division that draws up psychological profiles of serial killers. Starling is to present a questionnaire to the brilliant forensic psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer, Hannibal Lecter. Lecter is serving nine consecutive life sentences in a Maryland mental institution for a series of murders.
Crawford's real intention, however, is to try to solicit Lecter's assistance in the hunt for a serial killer dubbed "Buffalo Bill", whose M.O. involves kidnapping large women, starving them for up to two weeks, killing and skinning them, and dumping the remains in nearby rivers. The nickname was started by Kansas City Homicide as a sick joke that "he likes to skin his humps." Although initially dismissive of Starling's questions, Lecter is offended when another inmate flings his semen at Starling, and as an apology he predicts that Buffalo Bill's next victim will be scalped, and tells her to locate a car owned by Benjamin Raspail, a former patient whom Lecter eventually murdered. When Starling locates the car in a storage unit, she discovers a severed head preserved in a jar, which Lecter later identifies as Raspail's lover Klaus. Throughout the investigation, Starling periodically returns to Lecter in search of information, and the two form a strange relationship in which he offers her cryptic clues in return for information about her troubled and bleak childhood as an orphan. Starling must also contend with Dr. Frederick Chilton, the asylum's administrator and Lecter's self-styled nemesis, who makes sexual advances at Starling and attempts to insert himself into the investigation for his own gain.
When Bill's sixth victim is found in West Virginia, Starling helps Crawford perform the autopsy. Starling finds a pupa in the throat of the victim, and just as Lecter predicted, she has been scalped. Triangular patches of skin have also been taken from her shoulders. Furthermore, autopsy reports indicate that Bill had killed her within four days of her capture, much faster than his earlier victims. Starling takes the pupa to the Smithsonian, where it is initially identified as the black witch moth, a species that does not naturally occur where the victim was found, [1] though later it is identified as the Death's-head Moth, an even more exotic species that would have to be reared in captivity from imported eggs. A similar pupa is found in Klaus' head, and based on this connection, Starling believes that Lecter knows Buffalo Bill's identity. She asks Crawford, who is caring for his terminally ill wife Bella, why she was sent to fish for information on Buffalo Bill without being told she was doing so. Crawford claims that if she had had an agenda, Lecter would have sensed it and never spoken up.
In Tennessee, Catherine Baker Martin, daughter of Senator Ruth Martin, is kidnapped. Within six hours, her blouse is found on the roadside, slit up the back: Buffalo Bill's calling card. He traps her in an oubliette and begins to starve her. Crawford is advised that no less than the President of the United States has expressed "intense interest" in the case, and that a successful rescue is preferable. Crawford estimates they have three days before Catherine is killed. Starling is sent to Lecter with the offer of a deal: if he assists in Catherine's rescue and Buffalo Bill's capture, he will be transferred out of the asylum to a facility that allows him a view, with privileges one week a year to visit a secluded beach and enjoy the outdoors. Lecter expresses skepticism at the genuineness of the offer, but he does not believe that Starling would intentionally lie to him. He tells her that Buffalo Bill has come to believe he was transsexual, despite this self-diagnosis consistently being deemed false by doctors, causing him to be rejected for sexual reassignment surgery by multiple hospitals.
After Starling leaves, Lecter reminisces on the past, recalling a conversation with Benjamin Raspail, a former patient whom he had eventually murdered. During therapy sessions, Raspail told Lecter about a former lover, Jame Gumb: After Raspail left Gumb and began dating a sailor named Klaus, Gumb became jealous and murdered Klaus, using his skin to make an apron. Raspail also revealed that Gumb had an epiphany upon watching a butterfly hatch.
Lecter's ruminations are interrupted when Chilton steps in. A listening device allowed him to record Starling's offer, and Chilton has found out that Crawford's deal is a lie. He offers one of his own: If Lecter reveals Buffalo Bill's identity, he will indeed get a transfer to another asylum, but only if Chilton gets credit for getting the information from him. Lecter agrees, but insists that he be allowed to give the information to Senator Martin in person, in Tennessee. Unbeknown to Chilton, Lecter has secretly collected the ingredients for an improvised handcuff lockpick, which he deduces will be useful at some point during the travel.
In Tennessee, Lecter toys with Senator Martin briefly, enjoying the woman's anguish, but eventually gives her some information about Buffalo Bill: his name is Billy Rubin, and he has suffered from "elephant ivory anthrax", a knifemaker's disease. He also provides an accurate physical description. The name, however, is a red herring: bilirubin is a pigment in human bile and a chief coloring agent in human feces, which the forensic lab compares to the color of Chilton's hair.
Starling tries one last time to get information from Lecter as he is held in police custody. He offers a final clue—"we covet what we see every day"—and demands to hear her worst memory. Starling reveals that, after her father's death, she was sent to live with a cousin on a sheep and horse ranch. One night, she discovered the farmer slaughtering the spring lambs, and fled in terror with a mare also destined for the slaughterhouse whom she named Hannah. The farmer caught her and sent her to an orphanage, where she spent the rest of her childhood, though her efforts did result in Hannah being spared. Lecter, seeing the parallels between the helpless lambs and the equally helpless Catherine, thanks her for her candor, and the two share a brief moment of connection before Chilton forces her to leave. Shortly after this, Lecter escapes by killing and eviscerating his guards, using one of their faces as a mask to fool paramedics.
Crawford and Starling are blamed by the Attorney General's office for Lecter's escape, and Starling is threatened with expulsion from Quantico. The same day, Bella Crawford passes away. Despite the risk to her career, Starling continues her search for Buffalo Bill, deducing that he knew his first victim, Fredrica Bimmel, from everyday life. She visits Fredrica's family home, discovers that she was an accomplished tailor, and realizes that the pieces of skin Buffalo Bill takes from his victims are in the shape of a tailor's pattern: He is killing the women in order to make a 'suit' for himself to become a woman. By canvassing Bimmel's known associates, she ends up at the house of one Jame Gumb, a dressmaker and leatherworker. She spies a Death's-head moth in his home and draws her gun on Gumb; however, he escapes into his basement. Starling, armed only with a revolver but aware that calling for backup will result in Catherine's death, follows him down, and kills him after a protracted chase. Catherine is returned to her family physically unharmed.
Lecter, hiding in a St. Louis hotel room and preparing to escape to South America, writes several letters: one to Barney, an orderly at the asylum, thanking and tipping him for his courteous treatment, and one to Chilton, promising retaliation and torture. He also pens a congratulatory letter to Starling, in which he hopes that "the lambs have stopped screaming" and indicating that he has no plans to pursue her. He also predicts correctly that saving Catherine Martin may have granted Clarice some relief, but that the silence will never become eternal, heralding her motives for a continued career at the FBI. The novel ends with Clarice sleeping peacefully "in the silence of the lambs".
