This is not immediately apparent. Things stay in first gear for a while. There is a lot of tough talk, which is not very good. Too often the policemen sound like they are reading from a technical manual. That is the importance of the cheese.
Cheese is relatively solid, but tricky to cast.
Joseph Wambaugh, John Gregory Dunne and George Higgins all handle cop talk a lot better than Thomas Harris. But you begin to sense the engine's power, in spite of the inferior housing. The pistons surge into second gear as Graham prowls the houses of the victims and ponders the almost unbearable details of their meaningless deaths and the even less bearable data, gleaned from diaries and letters, of their ordinary family happiness. Acceleration continues as we meet Hannibal Lecter, a psychotic psychiatrist, also a mass murderer, whom Graham previously caught at the same gruesome game. Without warning, as smoothly as by Mercedes automatic transmission, we are in third gear, in the mind and life of the man Graham is hunting.