Darkly Dreaming Dexter
by Jeff Lindsay
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Book Reviews of Darkly Dreaming Dexter
Book Review: Really Disappointing
Summary: 1 Stars
This is perhaps a two star book, rather than a one star book, but I was so disappointed and let-down that I just couldn't give it two. The premise is awesome. A serial killer who stalks other serial killers, and you get a look at how he thinks? Wow! Great! Only this book falls far short of any excitement.
The characters are all so overly-written and stereotypical that I wanted to slap each one, every time they showed up.
- the sister has a cuss word every sentence (note, I'm not squeamish about this sort of thing, and admittedly my language is pretty bad, but it gets old really, really fast), is oh so pretty, and of course stupid.
- The lead detective is beyond stupid and got to where she is because she's so pretty, and such a good butt-kisser and it's all politics, to bad she can't see a plank until she's walked into it. We get treated to long monologues about how stupid she is every time we see her. To bad no one else is any smarter, including Dexter. Sorry author, you don't make your character smarter by dumbing everyone else down.
Dexter would go on lovely pointless monologues about how everyone was so stupid (by the way, if you're in Florida and you have a crime committed against you, don't expect it to be resolved, apparently the police there are for looks only.). Meanwhile I'm gritting my teeth as he mulls it over because it's so obvious a 3 year old could figure out each and every step. Dexter is apparently the only one with at least the intellect of a three year old by the way. Isn't he brilliant? Blech. Which leads me to the next let down: Dexter. So he kills people, and gets all weepy and romantic and poet-y about it. He feels no emotion. He doesn't get women. Then, next thing you know he understand his sister must be upset. He doesn't feel emotions, but he likes his sister, cares for her happiness. The point of being a sociopath is that you pretty much fake everything. You can't like people. You don't like children. You go through life doing what it takes to fit in, faking it. We keep hearing how Dexter's faking it, and then suddenly he's not, he's doing something out of character: feeling bad for his sister, kissing his girlfriend. If I wanted a man with a little trouble fitting in there are tons of books on the shelf. I wanted a sociopathic killer. Not some dude with a rather un-original voice in his head(who by the way, is said to not talk during some random flashback - don't get me started on long, rambling, heart-wreching-(not)-gag-me backstories).
My final disappointment: the mystery. As I said, no ones to bright. Shocking that no one notices the killer wasn't interrupted enough to not wrap the limbs! Shocking that no once can come up with any symbolism for the rear view mirror. And brilliant Dexter, nothing for miles but a gas station, the guys vanished, hmm, lets not check behind the gas station. And our taunting rival sociopath is all about being clean and keeping everything wrapped and piled up, but he throws a head at Dexter? It would have been really climactic, but I was busy wondering if this was some other guy or else why would this guy be breaking his M.O.? Oh, because the author thinks it'll be cool. Got it. When I've already got it figured out, I don't want to listen to the main character wax poetic about how there must be some meaning, oh right, he's so brilliant, it only took him ages worth of deep exploration to figure it out (remember, everyone else is stupid and doesn't stand a chance! They need Dexter to point out everything to them and everyone loves him even though even he admits he's a kiss-butt)
Admittedly, I did not read the book, rather listed to it on audiobook on a long car ride, maybe if I'd been able to put it down and go to something else I would have been able to make it through. Stopped just short of the end, my blood pressure was going up with every moment of pointless dribble. Maybe still, if I had been able to skip to the end of long paragraphs about how stupid people were, how brilliant he was, how he didn't know what emotion was, repeat 6 or 7 times per hour, I would have been fine. I doubt it. I'm not hard to please when I'm driving 8 hours alone. Most entertainment will suffice. Darkly Dreaming Dexter fell well short of "entertainment".
Book Review: An Enjoyable Protagonist is Undercut by a Confusing Ending
Summary: 3 Stars
Dexter Morgan is a blood-splatter analyst for the Miami police. His girlfriend Rita is a single mother with two wonderful children. His (foster) sister, Deborah, works for the Vice department, acting as a decoy for johns looking for a date, a job she hates. When a new serial killer begins his work on Miami's prostitute population, Deborah sees her chance for advancement to Homicide. She turns to Dexter for his help, knowing of his unique insight into the minds of such criminals. Unknown to Deb, Dexter is a serial killer himself, carefully molded by their father to prey upon other serial killers. But now this new killer's MO speaks to Dexter in a way that other killers have not. Indeed Dexter finds the possibility of working with this killer almost too intriguing, as if they share the same mind. And Dexter has caught himself sleepwalking lately, on the nights the women were murdered.
Jeff Lindsay's debut novel "Darkly Dreaming Dexter" presents an intriguing twist on the serial-killer genre. Dexter is the archetypal literary serial killer: arrogant, self-consciously witty, intelligent, and misanthropic. He is incapable of real emotion, taking his only pleasure from the stalking and murder of serial killers. His relationship with Rita is purely one of convenience to insure his pretense of normality. His relationship with his sister is less about family and more about a sense of duty. And yet, he's reasonably likeable.
Credit goes to author Lindsay here for shaping such a realistic and fully realized voice for his hero. Dexter is our narrator, and Lindsay writes his narration beautifully, creating a fully fleshed out character. Dexter is an ironic and cynical storyteller, sharing the frequent wink and a nod with the reader, by turns lapsing to the childish bit of alliteration to describe the most awful things.
Unfortunately, the plot of "Darkly Dreaming Dexter" does not quite measure up to the characters. It's pretty standard stuff of brilliant detective hunting the brilliant serial killer while dealing with his less-enlightened superior officers. Admittedly, the twist of the brilliant detective also being a brilliant serial killer does add enough of a wrinkle to keep the reader along. Further, Lindsay does have an excellent sense of pacing, and the narrative is quite thrilling. Wisely, Lindsay does not create a hyper-ritualized killer whose methods are so elaborate as to be impractical. His killer has a thing for ice, but is otherwise perfectly plausible. And the possibility that the killer is Dexter himself remains throughout. The fact that Dexter wants to join this other killer is a not-so-subtle reminder that Dexter isn't a good person.
The biggest flaw of this book is its confusing ending. The resolution doesn't feel natural or logical, and the last few pages are a blur of events that don't quite click with anything. The book simply stops, which rather undermines it. Further, the revelation of the villain is actually pretty cliched, undercutting the relative creativity of the novel.
Still, I did enjoy "Darkly Dreaming Dexter" enough to read its sequel. I will also look into the new TV series based on this book. Dexter is surprisingly enjoyable to be with, even if there's so little that is admirable in his character. It was just the ending of the book that hurt it.
Book Review: Between the Covers: Book Review Blog
Summary: 5 Stars
I have a book review blog through blogspot called "Between the Covers" that reviewed this book on February 23, 2009:
Darkly Dreaming Dexter, by Jeff Lindsay
The basis for Showtime's Emmy nominated "Dexter," that just previously finished its third season, is this wonderfully original series by Jeff Lindsay. You've seen cat-and-mouse mystery thrillers before, but none like this from a truly unique point of view.
Dexter Morgan, a blood-splatter forensic analyst for the Miami police department, goes above and beyond to catch the bad guy. If there is not enough evidence to catch the murderer and put him behind bars for good, Dexter takes care of it himself. However, Dexter's secret is not that he is a superhero; Dexter Morgan is a serial killer. Here's the catch, he only kills the bad guys. He fakes a normal life with his girlfriend Rita and his cop sister Deborah, but things become more complicated when a series of murders start to mimic Dexter's method. As a child, Dexter was found on a brutal crime scene where his mother was murdered. The officer on scene, Harry, became Dexter's foster father, but it wasn't long before Harry started to see the beginnings of Dexter's dark side. Instead of kicking that badness out, Harry trained Dexter to have a conscience and only get those that the law could not get by itself. He was also trained to never get caught. When this new series of murders seems to be sending messages directly to Dexter that only he can see, it seems that someone might know what Dexter does as a hobby. But with Harry dead who could possibly know besides Dexter? Could it be that Dexter's training and wiring has blown and he no longer only kills bad guys and just doesn't know it yet? He better find out quickly when those close to him start becoming targets. The only way to do this is to figure out more about his past before Harry found him at the crime scene and confront that buried past.
In his first book to the series, Jeff Lindsay brilliantly introduces a new point of view that has rarely been seen in literature, that of the serial killer mastermind. He makes it easy to fall for the killer even though Dexter is emotionless and fakes everything to the real world. There is also a fine bunch of characters to interact with in this way, his girlfriend Rita who might be as damaged as him, his foster-sister Deborah desperately trying to move from vice to homicide, a perverted lab forensic lab partner, a female lieutenant constantly flirting with him, and a Sergeant Doakes who may be the only one that suspects Dexter is more than what he seems. The fantastic way Lindsay gets his readers into the head of this serial killer is more than enough to make you enthusiastic for the rest of his series. And the fact that the plot keeps you on the edge of your seat constantly, and each new clever step blows your mind, will keep you flipping through the pages so fast you are in danger of a paper cut.
I would strongly recommend this book as well as Season One of Showtime's "Dexter" that follows the same plotline. I am a big fan of this book series for its constant originality in a popular genre where that rarely seems the case.
"It is not true we have only one life to love, if we can read, we can live as many lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish."
- S.I. Hayakawa
Book Review: Not much more than "okay"
Summary: 3 Stars
Well, first of all I must confess that I read this book after mauling through the entire first season of TV series in two sittings. I suppose that means, among other things, that I became attached to the characterizations set forth in the show and was therefore somewhat let down by Lindsay's different, and often paper-thin, versions of everyone that inhabits Dexter's world. While Dexter himself is fleshed out nicely (The entire book consists of his narration, so there was really no way around fleshing him out.), almost all of the other characters are cardboard cutouts. Even Rita, whose complete gentleness provides the perfect foil for Dexter in the show, exists in the novel as nothing but some vaguely defined voice on the phone who has maybe five lines in the entire book. I'm used to TV characters being mere shadows of the deep portrayals we're treated to in print, but that is far from the case here.
Would I have liked the book better had I not seen the TV series first? Honestly, I'm not sure. While the premise - a serial killer who hunts other murderers while working as crime scene analyst - remains extremely interesting, the actual execution leaves a lot to be desired. While the novel has quite a bit of sardonic humor, it also stretches the already somewhat tenuous plausibility of the subject matter too thin in more than a few places. Dexter's "sense" about the serial killer that serves as the book's villain is trotted out too frequently as a deus ex machina, and the ending of the novel (the last three chapters or so) seems painfully rushed and awkward.
This is extra disappointing because the novel starts out so strongly, opening with a taut sequence in which Dexter abducts a child-killer and holds him accountable for his crimes. If the rest of the book maintained that caliber of prose and storytelling, I'd be raving about it. Sadly, there's a sense in which the only scenes in the book that really "work" are the ones involving Dexter's crimes, while the rest of the novel metamorphoses into a bizarre quasi-cartoon in which our hero cracks too many jokes at the expense of the caricatures that surround him. Maybe this difference is intentional, but I'm not entirely satisfied with it. As I've already stated, I found the ending to be extremely unsatisfying, mostly because it comes from so far out of left field. I'm of the school of thought that a mystery novel should provide the astute reader with the tools to figure out "whodunit" on their own, but 'Darkly Dreaming Dexter' allows us no such luxury. It honestly feels as if Lindsay got to the end, couldn't figure out where to go with his story, and just wrote the first thing that came into his mind.
I desperately wanted to like this book. As entertaining as the TV show is, I had expected the novel to be an absolute masterpiece. (Or at least a more enjoyable read.) Sadly, it is not. This is one of the few times when a TV adaptation improves upon the source material. Is 'Darkly Dreaming Dexter' a terrible book? No. It's an okay book. But it never really manages to make it past that.
Book Review: The Show is Better
Summary: 4 Stars
My day job happened to have a connection to the Dexter show - the sister of one of my coworkers worked on the set. My curiosity was already piqued by the premise of a serial killer turned vigilante, and I thought that as a show it would either be a marvelous achievement or a glorious disaster. Since it was on Showtime, and I don't get Showtime, I didn't get the chance to find out.
Eventually, Dexter came out on DVD and much to my relief the show was phenomenal. Dexter is every bit as charming and cold-blooded as you might expect from a sympathetic psychopath, and his occasional narrative aside serves to add both humor and horror to the events on screen. And those events are the political machinations of the Miami Police Department.
Dexter was raised by his foster father and former cop, Harry, to follow a particular code. This code regulates everything Dexter does, from how he dresses to whom he kills. Dexter's bloody murders are further complicated by his beard of a girlfriend, Rita, his half-sister Deborah, and his day job as a blood spatter analyst. Then one day a serial killer starts committing murders with an underlying message, a message meant only for Dexter. And then things get REALLY complicated...
The show is surprisingly true to the book. Every character is there just as I imagined them, except one: the main antagonist. In the television series, Dexter's antithesis is smart, conniving, believable, and capable of far worse than Dexter himself. In the book, he's a one-note ghoul who, in the span of five pages or so, expounds upon his entire background, his reason for killing and tempting Dexter, and their relationship.
And therein lay the problem. Darkly Dreaming Dexter tries to be both an ironic reflection of our fascination with serial killers and a murder mystery, but the mystery is severely lacking. Lindsay can only come up with "maybe Dexter's committing the murders in his sleep." It's telling that the producers of the television series discarded that notion right away, choosing instead to introduce the villain gradually.
The other problem is that the book escalates a conflict in Dexter's personal and professional life to such a level that it's something of a cheat; killing an antagonist off is easy, defeating them is hard. The end of Darkly Dreaming Dexter doesn't even give us closure with the other serial killer. He just gets away, leaving the reader with an unsatisfying conclusion and the creeping feeling that Dexter's personable façade has been completely discredited.
Nevertheless, Dexter is a marvelous read. As narrator, Dexter himself toys with language, using alliteration at it fancies him. As an author, Lindsay's writing skills are above par, and some of his descriptions are almost poetic.
Given the choice between the two though, I'll stick with television Dexter, thanks.