Cari Mora - Thomas Harris

***** Quick and ruthless

Nobody writes about evil like Thomas Harris, in all its nuances, ranging from fear to fascination. Also for this reason he is my favourite author, despite (or perhaps thanks to the fact that) he isn’t very prolific. Therefore, when I learned that a new book of his was about to come out thirteen years after the previous one, I was looking forward in anticipation of his reading. Obviously, I didn’t buy it as soon as it was published. Like all the books of my favourite authors, I let it mature, I looked around, I read the unflattering reviews that it collected and, with every bad review I came across, I felt it would be a great read. And I wasn’t wrong.

“Cari Mora” is concise. A captivating prose with no frills or unnecessary information. Each word is a precise brush stroke on the protagonists of this story and on the ruthless world in which they move, where nobody is good, but everyone is bad or damaged (or both). Someone more, someone less.

It’s quick. There are no reflections, pauses. Everything happens very quickly. It looks like a story designed to be turned into a film. It would be a great film in the hands of the right screenwriter and the right director.

The title is nothing more than the name of the main character, but the author doesn’t just linger over her. He enters deeply the minds of the supporting characters and in particular of the antagonist. And a shiver runs through your back as you face, even if only for a moment, the thoughts of the latter. But there is no time to mull over it, because the story continues, fast and inexorable.

As in all Harris’s books, you can’t just stop reading. The book calls you during the day, it demands your attention. I’m not a compulsive reading person who forgets everything else to read. Only Harris’s books have this effect on me.

The most exciting part is undoubtedly the ending, in which you feel in serious danger like Cari, but fight for your life, breathless, your heart racing. Here the character expresses itself to the fullest and shows a glimpse of the immense potential it possesses.

If I didn’t know how much Harris is reluctant to write with a certain frequency, I would think that “Cari Mora” has the purpose of presenting this character (and that of the policeman), as the first of a series of books. But perhaps what Harris wants is only to offer us the elements for our imagination to go ahead on its own. Or we must expect a TV series inspired by this novel in the future.

I don’t know. I only know that I hope Harris will write again.

Cari Mora on Amazon.