Retired FBI agent Terry McCaleb attempts to discover the identity of a serial killer.

"Boone may be a troubled young man, but his troubles are just beginning. Set up as the fall guy in a string of slasher murders, he decides he'll hide by crossing the threshold that separates us from them and sneak into the forbidden subterranean realm of Midian. Boone will live among the monsters. ... They are the Nightbreed, denizens of a world beyond death, beyond imagination, perhaps beyond anything you've seen."--Container.

When FBI agent Clarice Starling is assigned a case involving a monstrous serial killer, she seeks counsel from an imprisoned cannibalistic psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter, whose fascination with the young woman is as great as his hunger for murder. As their relationship develops, Starling must confront her own demons, and an evil so powerful that she may not have the courage or strength to stop it.