phungus's Full Review: Jeff Lindsay - Dearly Devoted Dexter
Jeff Lindsay’s Dearly Devoted Dexter is the second novel in his trilogy about a sort of good serial killer named Dexter Morgan. These books were the inspiration for the hit Showtime series, Dexter, starring Michael C. Hall of HBO’s Six Feet Under.
Dexter Morgan is a blood splatter specialist for the Miami Police Department. He has a steady job and a girlfriend. On the surface, he seems like a perfectly normal guy who is very good at his job. However, on the inside he is an emotionless inhuman killer who has learned, through rigorous practice and conditioning over the years, how to act like a human being. Whenever the opportunity arises, Dexter likes to kill people, but there is a catch. He does not randomly choose innocent victims, but instead picks known criminals who have managed to dodge the justice system. In nature, king snakes like to eat other snakes, including poisonous ones. When it comes to murderers in Miami, Dexter is the king snake.
The story begins with Dexter hiding in the bushes, hoping not to be found while he plays his little game once again. Just when he thinks he has the perfect hiding spot, someone reaches in and grabs him by the arm, only to reveal that he’s playing hide and seek with his girlfriend’s two young children. Despite Dexter’s many flaws, he actually likes children and enjoys being with them. Whenever he finds out somebody is hurting children, he gives them ‘the special treatment’, which is what happens to a pedophile killer early on in the story.
The main plot of this book deals with a serial killer who surgically dismembers his victims so that they do not die. He drugs the victims enough to keep them conscious, then places a mirror over his operating table so that the victim can watch their arms, legs, ears, nose, lips, genitals, teeth, and eyelids be removed without being able to do anything about it. When the first victim is found, he is nothing more than a featureless torso, and the mind inside that shell of a man has long since gone completely insane. Dexter, naturally, envies the killer’s precision, but must go on a hunt of his own when the next victim ends up being someone close to him.
I really liked Lindsay’s first Dexter story, Darkly Dreaming Dexter, but I loved this one. I thought this book had a lot more dark humor and the story was fleshed out a little better. Dexter has got to be one of the most unique characters I’ve read in a while, and what makes him so good is that the entire book is narrated from his inner monologue. Dexter is incapable of emotion, so his observations of human behavior are often robotic, but funny in a strange way.
The story in this novel continues with many of the characters from the first book, including Dexter’s sister and girlfriend. Dexter even takes up drinking beer and further advances his relationship with the girlfriend, but in his eyes it is only to reinforce his image of normalcy so that he may continue killing people that need to be killed, as his father used to say. Dexter’s father was a retired police officer who recognized the insanity inside his son, so he helped the boy focus his energy on doing something useful rather than just randomly killing people. It’s a twisted way of combining a father’s love with his law enforcement background. Just like the first book, Dexter talks about his dad a lot in this one.
Despite being about two rival serial killers, one completely evil and the other a different kind of evil (Dexter), this book mostly offers a deeper look into the mind of Dexter. You can’t help but like the guy because of the way he looks at human behavior and how he tries to make himself fit in. He often winds up in the same kind of awkward situations that the rest of us might get into, but for entirely different reasons. Even though what Dexter does is wrong, one can’t help but think the world is better without his criminal victims.
If you read the first book or are a fan of the Showtime show, I highly recommend Dearly Devoted Dexter. The next book in this series, Dexter in the Dark, was just released in September 2007.
Dexter Morgan has been under considerable pressure. In trying to avoid the deep suspicions of the dangerous Sergeant Doakes who believes Dexter is a h...More at Barnes & Noble.com
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