A serial murderer known only by a grotesquely apt nickname- Buffalo Bill- is stalking particular women. He has a purpose, but no one can fathom it, for the bodies are discovered in different states. Clarice Starling, a young trainee at the FBI Academy, is surprised to be summoned by Jack Crawford, chief of the bureau's behavioral science section. Her assignment: to interview Dr. Hannibal Lector, a brillian psychiatrist and grisly killer now kept under close watch in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Lector's insight into the minds of murderers could help track and capture Buffalo Bill. -From inside book cover.