En Silence of the Lambs Summary

Chapters 1 & 2

The FBI has tried to interview and examine all the thirty-two known serial murderers she has in custody, to build up a database for psychological profiling in unsolved cases. Twenty-seven were willing to cooperate, but the one they want the most, they haven’t been able to get. His name is Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Jack Crawford wants Clarice Starling to go after him in the asylum. Dr. Chilton, the head of the mental hospital, will go over the physical procedure she uses to deal with him. She may not deviate from it for any reason. Clarice meets Dr. Chilton in Baltimore. Chilton gives Clarice instructions about Dr. Lecter and he guides her through the dungeons to Dr. Lecter.

Chapters 3 & 4

Clarice meets Dr. Lecter. After a short and fatiguing conversation with Lecter she leaves. Lecter thinks he can make Clarice very happy on Valentine’s Day. Lecter says she has to look in Raspail’s car for her Valentines. Clarice remembered the name Raspail. He was a patient of Lecter’s and one of his victims. She’d had only one evening with the Lecter background material. The file was vast and Raspail one of many victims. She needed to read the details.

Chapters 5 & 6

Jack Crawford has got a lot on his mind besides Buffalo Bill. His wife Bella’s real sick. She’s in a terminal situation. He’s keeping her at home. If it wasn’t for Buffalo Bill, he’d have taken compassionate leave. Clarice gets permission to proceed on the Raspail car. In her own time. Raspail had been dead for eight years. What evidence could have lasted in a car that long? It seemed unlikely that even an estate as tangled and disputed as Raspail’s would hold a car this long. After many phone-calls Clarice comes to the conclusion that Lecter’s hint about Raspail’s car is a dead end. It was mashed into a cube four months ago and sold for recycling.

Chapters 7 & 8

Jack Crawford wonders why Clarice thinks that the car Raspail drove was his only car. Raspail collected cars. Clarice decided to go to Raspail’s executor, a Chinese lawyer in Baltimore. His name is Everett Yow. Clarice and Everett Yow drove to Split City where Raspail’s classic Packard had been stored since long before his dead. In the car she found a big laboratory specimen jar and she knew what would be in it. The head inside the jar had been severed neatly close beneath the jaw.

Chapters 9 & 10

Clarice second visit to Dr. Lecter. He says the head inside the jar belongs to Raspail’s lover, Klaus. Dr. Lecter thinks he can help tracing Buffalo Bill. In exchange for information he wants a view. He wants a window where he can see a tree or even water. Before Clarice left he said that Buffalo Bill has a two-story house. Clarice thinks she’s being put off the case. But instead she may help the FBI in West Virginia. Some duck hunters found a body in the Elk River. Jack Crawford needs somebody to help him that can print a floater, among other things. They went to Virginia by plane.

Chapters 11 & 12

Clarice went through the Buffalo Bill file and examined all the files about his former victims.

The Potter Funeral Home is serving as the morgue for Rankin’ Country. Clarice takes fingerprints of the body