Cari Mora

Gourmand serial killer Hannibal Lecter may be off the menu, but now his creator, Thomas Harris, has added a new dish of terror. “Cari Mora” is Harris’s first novel since “Hannibal Rising” appeared 13 years ago. Fans of his earlier best-selling books — and the movies and TV shows wrung from them — will taste familiar ingredients in “Cari Mora,” along with a touch of Stieg Larsson’s “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and even a dash of Carl Hiaasen’s Florida zaniness. But the whole thing would definitely go better with some fava beans.<br /><br />The story is mostly a snooze: not so much “The Silence of the Lambs” as <i>The Counting of the Sheep</i>. It opens in Biscayne Bay at a mansion once owned by the late Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. After passing through the hands of playboys, filmmakers and speculators, this fabled house now sits unused, filled with monster mannequins, slasher-movie props, an electric chair from Sing Sing and something called “sex furniture,” which I must ask about the next time I go to Ikea.<br /><br />Only one person has the nerve to work as a caretaker of this old house of horrors: a beautiful immigrant named Cari Mora. At the age of 11, Cari was. . . . <br /><br /><i>To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:</i><br /><a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/readers-have-waited-13-years-for-a-new-thomas-harris-novel-but-cari-mora-is-no-hannibal/2019/05/20/135dd556-7af8-11e9-8ede-f4abf521ef17_story.html">https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...</a><br /><br /><i>To watch the Totally Hip Video Book Review of "Cari Mora," click here:</i> <br /><a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/entertainment/reading-thomas-harriss-new-novel-cari-mora-is-like-having-an-old-friend-over-for-dinner/2019/05/20/32554a27-b2a5-486d-a548-eb5f002b3415_video.html">https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/...</a>

Two it cannot be true I waited for 13 years and got this boring, predictable book with worst plot reminds you of low budgeted action movies stars!<br /><br />As soon as I hear, one of the greatest thriller writers is back with a new book, I started to dance and raise my punch in the air while I was screaming “Yess!”. Well, when I start flipping the pages, my punch was still raised in the air but this time , it was punching an invisible man ( actually I was imagining the writer on my head, because I was so pissed off when I see missing potentials and opportunities and this book is totally both of them)<br /><br />We meet Hans Peter Schneider, a serial killer, sadistic, dangerous man but there is nothing sophisticated or intriguing about him( if you compare him with Hannibal, he’s Disney character and worst copycat, only interesting thing he shares name with Hans Gruber/ all time best villain ?)rents the house on Miami Waterfront was once owned by notorious Pablo Escobar,for finding millions of dollars of buried gold. <br /><br />The house caretaker Cari Mora, tormented but tough heroine, escaped from violent past, is still scared of being sent back to her native country. <br /><br />When I expect more Chianti and fava beans, I didn’t even get a Cuban cigar. Because vague and graphic parts weren’t terrifying, they were just distasteful! <br /><br />From the beginning, I waited to see more action, more complications, anything witty, smart, surprising but I got none of them. I got bored and wanted to take an early Siesta break because I couldn’t stop my yawning !<br />Dull and pointless characterization, a storyline loses its own way and finishes predictably. <br /><br />Well Hans- Cari’s only similarities with Hannibal and Clarice are the first letters of their names. They are never gonna have memorable, creepy , blood freezing prey and hunter kinda relationship !

1 star . . . maybe 1.5 because the climax was okay . . .<br /><br />I read through many other reviews of this book before starting my review. I have taken a lot of guff on at least one of my 1-star reviews in the past, so since I was feeling another 1-star review, I knew I should probably tread carefully. In this case, it seems like the majority agree with me.<br /><br />In at least one of the positive reviews I read it was mentioned that maybe memories of Silence of the Lambs was causing too much of a comparison and, thus, led to generally negative reviews. I like to think I went into this not expecting more of the same. If anything, I think it is more of a pre-conception of how I feel about Harris as an author. In this case, I have read Harris books I loved and Harris books I couldn’t stand, so I guess I was figuring anything goes!<br /><br />I will stress that I did not look at reviews of this before reading, so I was not influenced by bad reviews. In fact, the only thing I heard about it was from a person who liked it. So, by the time I was about 2/3 of the way through and thought the book was not good, I figured I would be in the minority of thinking this. Imagine my surprise when I went to Goodreads and saw an average review of 2.89 stars! (as of August 11th, 2019) So, I was going into this review feeling the same as many! As much as I don’t like to celebrate 1 star reviews, I am glad to have some company.<br /><br />From the very beginning I was not invested in the story at all. The beginning of the book must hook me and at least get me interested. I don’t care how unusual, bizarre, or hard to follow it becomes after that. Once I am hooked, I can then figure out if I am headed towards a low star or high star rating. In this case, Harris just kept throwing out rotten bait and I just kept swimming around the boat looking for something tantalizing. A couple of times I thought I finally got a really juicy nightcrawler, but then it fell of the hook, so I just kept on swimming. I mentioned earlier the climax was okay – maybe by then I was tired of swimming and just finally gave up and let a moderately-tasty morsel pull me in because I could sense the end was in sight. Needless to say, I hope my next excursion looking for a hook gets me pulled on board right away!<br />

I’d give this zero stars if I could - what an unbearably tedious load of twaddle Thomas Harris’ new novel, Cari Mora, was! <br /><br />Cari Mora is the caretaker of a house on the Miami waterfront that used to belong to Pablo Escobar. Unbeknownst to her, there’s millions of dollars of gold buried somewhere on the property and bad guys, including psychopathic Hans-Peter Schneider, are after it - which means she’s in the way and has to go. But, of course, Cari is no pushover - let battle commence! <br /><br />I don’t know how a writer as experienced and talented as Harris could’ve made such a dog’s dinner of a seemingly straightforward story, but he completely bungles the execution. It’s an unfocused and unnecessarily complicated narrative with awkward scene transitions (random flashbacks to the past) and too many pointless details that slow an already sedate narrative down to an interminably glacial pace. <br /><br />A lot of the time it’s confusing and unclear what’s happening and why, and it’s always, always uninteresting! It amounts to one set of dull wafer-thin characters vs another set with a predictable conclusion - duuuh, d’you think the obviously “good” character prevails against the obviously “evil” character? Yuh huh! <br /><br />And that’s the other thing: the cast are a bunch of vaguely-written nobodies. Cari and Hans-Peter are bargain basement Clarice and Hannibal stand-ins while the rest - of which there are way too many, particularly as none of them are important anyway - may as well be called Stock Detective Character and Stock FBI Agent Character; that’s how memorable they are! <br /><br />Cari Mora fails across the board. Badly written, boring beyond belief, and a total waste of time, I can’t believe this is the same writer that gave us The Silence of the Lambs - what a difference 30 years makes, eh?

I went into Thomas Harris's latest novel, Cari Mora, with no expectations, and found that I really enjoyed reading it. Set in Miami, Florida, a multi-million mansion home on Biscayne Bay used to belong to criminal drug lord, Pablo Escobar, and according to the now dying Jesus Villareal, buried in the basement is 25 million dollars of cartel gold, sought by the monstrously evil and depraved Hans-Peter Schneider, a human trafficking, organ harvesting psychopath, with a business fulfilling the desires of deranged rich men. A Columbian mob boss, Don Ernesto Ibarra, known by the tabloids as Don Teflon, has his eyes on the gold too, with Benito, the gardener, ex-marine Antonio and Captain Marco working for him.<br /><br />The beautiful Cari Mora with her scars on her arms, accompanied by her rather vocal cockatoo, works a multitude of jobs, one of which is as caretaker of Escobar's mansion, now rented out by Felix the agent to Schneider, in the guise of making a horror movie. The moment Schneider eyes Cari, he has nefarious plans for her, plans that become a obsession for him. What he is unaware of is that Cari is a survivor, she was taken to become a child soldier for FARC in Columbia, to eventually end up in Miami, with dreams of being a veterinarian with her love of birds and animals, but hampered by her Temporary Protected Status and fear of ICE. She knows she is in danger on meeting Schneider, and his motley crew, refusing to stay at the mansion, despite the pressure being put on her to do so by Felix. When Miami Dade Homicide cop, DS Terry Robles warns her Schneider is coming for her, he asks her to help them catch him.<br /><br />I think for readers who go into this novel with expectations of another Red Dragon or The Silence of the Lambs, disappointment beckons. I really liked the character of Cari, fulfilling family care responsibilities, desiring her own home and wanting to be free to become a vet, she just needs to find the opportunities and money to attain her dreams. The serpent in her Florida paradise, threatening to take her and ruin her life is Schneider, culminating in Cari's ultimate fight for her survival. This is an enjoyable and entertaining read, of greed, violence, horror and brutality, likely to be appreciated by those readers who do not expect Harris to present them with similar storytelling from his past canon. Many thanks to Random House Cornerstone for an ARC.

<b>I can't stave off my suspicion that this was written by some randomized neuro network choosing words at random just to follow it up with combining them into random phrases. I'm not sure how a human is supposed to read it. Or have written it.<br /><br />A supremely boring novel about something or other... I won't be bothered finding out, of what exactly. A bunch of dudes keep stumbling about and raving about stuff and having the dullest ever adventures of the kind that induce sleep in 3...2...1...zzZZZ!<br /> <br />The only plotline that makes any kind of sense is the line of Cari and her child soldier background. And even that was undercooked. The rest is all over the place in just the way that the best chapter is about some croco's digestion. I'm not kidding:</b><br />Q:<br />The crocodile, pleasantly full, swam south, submerging whenever a boat came by. She was a fourteen-foot saltwater crocodile and she spent part of her time in the Everglades eating juvenile Burmese pythons and the odd muskrat and nutria, but she preferred the salt bay of the South Bay Country Club, where she basked on land near the golf course fairway. ...<br />Crocodiles, unable to chew, must eat large creatures in chunks after they have decomposed and softened. But Chihuahuas can be swallowed whole, as can corgis, Lhasa apsos and shih tzus. They can be eaten fresh without having to soften in a larder, such as the one the crocodile maintained beneath the Escobar house.<br />Other than Felix, the crocodile had eaten only one human, a drunk who fell off a boat full of drunks and was not missed at the time or ever accounted for or mourned. She had a buzz for perhaps an hour after eating him.<br />The crocodile did not dwell on eating humans, but with her prodigious memory for food and the locations of food, she did recall how refreshingly free humans were of hair and feathers and tough hide and horns and beaks and hooves. Unlike a pelican, which is more trouble than it is worth.<br />Dog owners with their shorts and their plump white legs, sneaking along briskly in the gloaming following their pets, were attractive to her and they could not see very well as the light failed. It only called for patience.<br />The crocodile suffered some small discomfort in the night passing Felix’s headlamp, and left it beside the fairway, to the puzzlement of the grounds-keepers. (c)<br /><br />Q:<br />A progression of lights on and off up through the house as Cari made her way through the mannequins, the crouching movie monsters, the seventeen-foot Mother Alien from the Planet Zorn to reach her bedroom at the top of the stairs. (c) <b>What?</b><br /><br />Q:<br />He sat naked on a stool in the center of his tiled shower room, letting the many nozzles on the walls beat water on him from all directions. He was singing in his German accent: “… just singing in the rains. What a glorious feeling, I am haaaappy again.”<br />He could see his reflection in the glass side of his liquid cremation machine where he was dissolving Karla, a girl who hadn’t worked out for business.<br />In the rising mist Hans-Peter’s image on the glass looked like a daguerreotype. He struck the pose of Rodin’s The Thinker and watched himself out of the corner of his eye. A faint smell of lye rose with the steam.<br />Interesting to see himself as The Thinker reflected on the glass, while behind the glass, in the tank, Karla’s bones were beginning to stand up out of the paste the corrosive lye water had made of the rest of her. The machine rocked, sloshing fluid back and forth. The machine burped and bubbles came up.<br />Hans-Peter was very proud of his liquid cremation machine.... If a girl did not work out, Hans-Peter could just pour her down the loo in liquid form—and with no harmful effect on the groundwater. (c) <b>Bogey-crematorium villain served.</b><br /><br />Q:<br />She did not blink. The black pupils of her eyes had the smudge of intelligence. (c) <b>Quite a smudge, it must have been.</b><br /><br /><b>What I hated is that this is all pretty much a recipe for making some or other boring film. See this:</b><br />Q:<br />Two men talking in the middle of the night. They are 1,040 miles apart. One side of each face is lit by a cell phone. They are two half-faces talking in the dark.<br />“I can get the house where you say it is. Tell me the rest, Jesús.”<br />The reply is faint through a crackle of static. “You paid one-fourth of what you promised.” Puff-puff. “Send me the rest of the money. Send it to me.” Puff-puff.<br />“Jesús, if I find what I want with no more help from you, you will receive nothing from me never.”<br />“That is truer than you know. That’s the truest thing you ever said in your life.” Puff-puff. “What you want is sitting on fifteen kilos of Semtex…if you find it without my help you will be splattered on the moon.”<br />“My arm is long, Jesús.”<br />“It won’t reach down from the moon, Hans-Pedro.”<br />“My name is Hans-Peter, as you know.”<br />“You’d put your hand on your peter if your arm was long enough? Is that what you said? I don’t want your personal information. Quit wasting time. Send the money.”<br />The connection is broken. Both men lie staring into the dark. <br />Hans-Peter Schneider is in a berth aboard his long black boat off Key Largo. He listens to a woman sobbing on the V-berth in the bow. He imitates her sobs. He is a good mimic. His own mother’s voice comes out of his face, calling the crying woman’s name. “Karla? Karla? Why are you crying, my dear child? It’s just a dream.” (c) <b>This is how it all starts and... it goes on and on and on... Is it just me being lazy or is some serious rambling around happening in here? Gosh. I wish there was more infodumping on crocodiles instead. </b><br /><br /><b> I haven't the slightest idea of how I'm supposed to rate it. I sorely miss the negative stars.</b>

This Harris' book was a bit of a tour de force and I didn't like it the way I liked his other books. A gold treasure buried somewhere in the former house of Pablo Escobar and some crooks trying to get it. The baddest crook is Hans-Peter Schneider, a sadistic German who once studied medicine and sells organs, Don Ernesto, Jesus, Capt. Marco. Everybody tries to get his share, some die. Then you have mysterious former FARQ fighter Cari Mora. Can she survive the story? Is she able to get the gold? There were too many characters involved, too much Spanish spoken (maybe his target readers should speak Spanish here), the frame story was a bit simple (gold buried in a difficult way in a house) and the chapters read a bit long winded. You can read this book, no question, but watching it as a movie would be the better option. Not completely bad, but different to Harris' other books, with a bad guy that reminded me a bit on Pendergast (maybe Harris wanted to give a satire on that character). That is a contemporary novel with many old school ingredients (descriptions of weapons, music...). But to me it didn't really take off. If you're interested in South America/Mexico and crime stories based around related stuff you might take a peak. If not, there are better page turners out.

With CARI MORA Thomas Harris does what he does best - takes us on a spine-tingling, edge-of-your-seat ride steeped in intrigue and nail-biting suspense. You will not sleep. You will not eat. This book screams to be devoured in one sitting.

“Pulse pounding thriller” I CANNOT BELIEVE THOSE WORDS WERE USED TO DESCRIBE THIS BOOK!!! Yes, I’m yelling a’la Annie Wilkes!!! No, just no. I was soooo looking forward to this book, how is it the same author from Silence of Lambs wrote this caca-doodie!?!! Needless to say I am gravelly disappointed. (I think this is the first 1 star book of this year.)

<a href="https://heresthefuckingtwist.com/" rel="nofollow noopener">Book Blog</a> | <a href="https://instagram.com/thefuckingtwist/" rel="nofollow noopener">Bookstagram</a><br><br>I can't believe I waited thirteen years for the author who inspired my love of writing and reading and serial killers to reenter my life only put me to fucking sleep. <br><br>I'm so sorry Mr. Harris, but girl what is you doing? <br><br>Beneath an unoccupied Miami Beach mansion that used to belong to Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, rumour has it there are millions of dollars in gold. Two men are in a race to get to the gold first. Don Ernesto, a Colombian mob boss, and Hans-Peter Schneider, a depraved "business" German sausage who kills women and sells their body parts to wealthy buyers to satisfy whatever their particular fetish or hobby is. That's a class system statement right there. <br><br>Cari Mora is an immigrant and the caretaker for the mansion. To Ernesto and Hans-Peter, Cari is in the way and needs to go.<br><br>Okay, so that's basically an amazing-sounding story. It's got everything, hidden treasure, dead drug lords, the mafia, a heroine who is vying for the title of the newest Badass Female in Fiction, sex furniture and a demented body parts smuggler who really enjoys the murder-y part of his work. <br><br>So, please, take a moment to register my utter shock and heartbreak that this book was boring AF. <br><br><img src="https://images.gr-assets.com/hostedimages/1565639089ra/27979618.gif" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"><br><br>The only decent chapter was one told from the perspective of an alligator that was having digestive issues after eating a person. And honestly, that chapter made no sense in context with the rest of the novel. So, honestly, wtf?<br><br>Some other quick points: There were too many characters and they were 100% not required and only served to muddy up the plot waters. <br><br>Cari Mora as a character is so disappointing. It's like the author forgot to finish writing her. <br><br>There has only ever been one good villain named Hans, so don't even bother. <br><br>The pacing of this was so goddamn sedate that you might as well stick it in a pill bottle and prescribe it to insomnia sufferers.<br><br>The plot was actually very linear and didn't involve anything that could be described as climactic or unexpected. But at the same time, the narrative is complicated and hard to follow? And also totally uninteresting?? So, I guess props for confusing me with how that contradiction is possible.<br><br>I don't understand how Thomas Harris could actually be the author behind this novel. What is happening?! I blame Trump. It's this goddamn multiverse we slipped into in 2016 where nothing makes sense and Nazis are chillin'.<br><br>I'm about to go all Annie Wilkes up in here.<br><br><img src="https://images.gr-assets.com/hostedimages/1565639089ra/27979620.gif" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"><br><br>I love Thomas Harris dearly, and that's why this is getting two stars instead of one. <br><br>But, it's a straight-up mess. <br><br>⭐⭐ | 2 stars