SOURCE: Sexton, David. “Brazil, Where the Nuts Come From.” Spectator 278, no. 8797 (1 March 1997): 29–30.

In the following review, Sexton offers a negative assessment of Hornet's Nest, criticizing Cornwell's attempts at interjecting comedy into the novel and the growing self piety in her heroines.

It's rarely the inventors who profit most from their discoveries. Thomas Harris is the genius of the modern thriller, if you take as a definition of genius expanding the very possibilities of a form. But, like the best innovators, Harris has not deigned to repeat himself. He has published only three novels so far: Black Sunday, an apprentice piece, in 1975; Red Dragon, the first to feature Hannibal Lecter, in 1981; and, greatly superior, The Silence of the Lambs in 1988.

Despite the huge success of both the books and the films, Harris has still not published the third Hannibal Lecter novel so obviously implied by his escape from captivity...