How much did I enjoy this book? Very much, indeed. Jeff Lindsay’s first book in the Dexter series is a first-person exploration into the vacuous shell that is the titular serial-killing character.
Dexter, due to an intense trauma when he was three, has grown into a thrity-something serial killer who, despite his lack of a typical human morality, kills only the “bad” people. With thirty-six murders-let’s not bandy words after all-you might think that he would have been caught, or that he would at the very least be under suspicion. But when your adoptive father was a cop, and you yourself work as a blood-spatter specialist for the Miami-Dade police department-well, these things make it far easier to embrace the serial killer lifestyle.
But when trouble does arrive for Dexter, it comes at him from multiple fronts. The first is a new serial killer working the same city as Dexter, a killer whose methods Dexter cannot help but admire. In describing the dismemberments, Dexter fairly gushes with admiration for this new killer’s “art.”
The second is Dexter’s sister, Deborah, a cop stuck in the vice squad and hooker-gear. When one of the new killer’s victims shows up in her gritty little corner of Miami-Dade, she is suddenly thrust into the middle of both the murder investigate and the back-biting politics of a homicide unit. She desperately wants into homicide and clothing that covers more than her bare essentials. But the lieutenant running the show doesn’t like her, doesn’t respect her, and doesn’t let her too close to the investigation.
The third are Dexter’s dark dreams, something that has never plagued him before. In them he sees himself floating above the victims of this new killer while the fiend himself prepared to slice and dice.
There are more troubles, such a girlfriend who escalates their relationship from platonic to very-much-less-than platonic, amorous advances from Deborah’s nemesis the lieutenant, and a police sergeant who trusts Dexter as much as he trusts the city of Miami to behave itself. All these things are thrown into the cauldron of Dexter’s once neat and tidy life and makes for a compelling, page-turning thriller that turns the serial killer genre upside down.
Which is not to say that the book is flawless. Rather, it is far from it.
The most glaring issue with “Darkly Dreaming Dexter” is the ending. I will be the first to admit the difficulty in crafting an end to a story that explains the whodunit, offers satisfactory action at the conclusion, and keeps the reader on the edge of their seat. In this particular case, Lindsay has constructed an entire serial killer murder mystery around a contrived premise. I won’t reveal what that premise is here. Instead I’ll simply say that the ending was neat and orderly (despite the bloodletting) and, while it is the only plausible explanation, it is still a disappointment. Lindsay seems to have built the story around the ending and built the ending to avoid exploring how far the murderous angel of Dexter might have fallen.
My next gripe relates to the first, insomuch as it is contingent upon the ending. Lindsay has written in the narration a number of red herrings designed to make you question the sanity of the main character. While this in and of itself is not particularly problematic, what is an issue is that he never makes it believable. Were it less doubtful and hesitant, it might have worked and I might have been gnawing on my nails a bit, but in this case, I never fell into the trap he set.
(For a fantastic example of red herrings, reader traps, and pulling it altogether at the end in spectacular fashion, read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.)
By now you may be asking yourself why I enjoyed this book. The singularly best aspect of this novel is the narrative voice. The story of Dexter is told by Dexter himself, and we get to follow along this empty human husk as he admires a murderer’s work, commits murder himself, and marvels at the world around him with the detached indifference of a housecat. The narrative voice is so convincing that you can feel yourself nodding when Dexter runs through the justifications for his crimes. You too can think like a serial killer.
The other thing that makes this book so good is Dexter’s murders. Naturally. There are only two, but they are deliciously told. Your heart will beat as you wait for Dexter to begin his acts, using a knife with the same cautious zeal as a painter with a brush. If there were one thing I would have wished for, it would have been for more of these soul-deadening trips. There are only two in the book and one that is referenced “off-stage”, but the two we see make for some lovely reading. If you enjoy reading about that sort of thing. One thing that works is how Lindsay holds back on the bloody details, and you get the sense that such restraint is difficult for him. There is not as much blood and gore as you might get from any Jack the Ripper book, but the planning and approach to Dexter’s murders is fun stuff. If you like that sort of thing.
All in all, it was a fine outing for the first of a series. So much so that I have loaned the second one from the library and cannot wait to knife right into it…
