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 and tries to overtake the apparent cause of death. She finds a cocoon of an insect inside the victim's mouth.

Chapters 13 & 14

Clarice and Jack went through the case a second time. They decided to bring the cocoon to the Smithsonian's National Museum for an accurate examination. Noble Pilcher and Albert Roden, two entomologists have come to the conclusion that the insect is a night moth, Erebus odora. It's a moth that should have waited three months to come out, so it had to be raised by somebody in a greenhouse.

Chapters 15 & 16

Catherine Baker Martin left her friend's house because she wanted to get some popcorn in her own house. A brown panel truck was parked near her apartment. When she tried to help a man putting a chair into the back of the truck he hit her with his arm until she was unconscious. At 2:45 am the special agent in charge of the Memphis FBI office reported to headquarters in Washington that Senator Ruth Martin's only daughter had disappeared. Jack Crawford immediately went to the place of the crime. Catherine was probably Buffalo Bill's next victim.

Chapters 17 & 18

Clarice heard about the kidnapping of Catherine on the radio. Jack Crawford called her to say that she had to pack for two nights and that she had to meet him in an hour at the Smithsonian museum. Klaus' head also contained a bug. It was in the throat, just like the girl in West Virginia. The FBI thinks that Klaus is also murdered by Buffalo Bill. Dr. Lecter told Clarice that his patient, Benjamin Raspail, claimed to have killed Klaus. But Lecter said he believed it was probably accidental erotic asphyxia. Jack Crawford thinks Lecter knows exactly how Klaus died. He wants Clarice to ask Dr. Lecter about it.

Chapters 19 & 20

Crawford tells Clarice that Dr. Lecter has to think they're coming to him strictly for theory and insight. There's no mention of the insect in Klaus' throat, no connection between Klaus and Buffalo Bill. Dr. Lecter has to think that she came back to him because she was so impressed that he could predict buffalo Bill would start scalping. She has an offer for some pretended privileges - stuff that only somebody powerful as Senator Martin could get for him. He has to believe he should hurry because the offer ends if Catherine dies. The Senator totally loses interest in him if that happens. And if he fails, it's because he's not smart and knowledgeable enough to do what he said he could do - it's not because he's holding out to spite them. Crawford was afraid of interference, afraid that the Senator might make the mistake of appealing to Dr. Lecter. In Jame Gumb's basement room directly beneath the kitchen was a well, long dry. Its stone rim, reinforced with modern well rings and cement, rose two feet above the sandy floor. There was a trap in the lid, big enough to lower a bucket through. He gave no sign if he heard the cry, still fairly strong and sane, that echoed up from the black hole: 'please.'

Chapters 21 & 22

Clarice entered