Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.
Title: Dearly Devoted Dexter.
Author: Jeff Lindsay.
Genre: Fiction, mystery, crime, dark humour.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 2005.
Summary: Life's tough for Dexter Morgan. It's not easy being the world's only serial killer with a conscience (though no empathy), especially when you work for the Miami police. To avoid suspicion, Dexter's had to slip deep into his disguise: spend time time with his girlfriend and her kids, slowly becoming the world's first serial killing couch potato. Then a particularly nasty psychopath starts cutting a trail through Miami-a killer whose twisted techniques leave even Dexter speechless. When his sister Deborah, a tough-as-nails cop, is drawn into the case, it becomes clear that Dexter will have to come out of hiding and hunt the monster down. Unless, of course, the killer finds him first...
My rating: 6/10.
My Review:
♥ I could have been much worse. I could have been a vicious raving monster who killed and killed and left towers of rotting flesh in my wake. Instead, here I was on the side of truth, justice, and the American way. Still a monster, of course, but I cleaned up nicely afterward, and I was OUR monster, dressed in red, white, and blue 100 percent synthetic virtue. And on those nights when the moon is loudest I find the others, those who prey on the innocent and do not play buy the rules, and I make them go away in small, carefully wrapped pieces.
♥ ..I always find it difficult to eat before one of my little adventures. My interior associate quivers with rising anticipation, the moon burbles louder and louder in my veins as the night slides over the city, and thoughts of food begin to seem so very ordinary.
♥ When he finally did, he rolled an eye to me and his face was filled with that understanding that comes when you have gone beyond pain into knowing that the rest of this was forever.
♥ It really is better to be lucky than to be good.
♥ It's an odd term, "girlfriend," particularly for grown persons. And in practice an even odder concept. Generally speaking, in adults it described a woman, not a girl, who was willing to provide sex, not friendship. In fact, from what I had observed it was quite possible for one to actively dislike one's girlfriend, although of course true hatred is reserved for marriage.
♥ I am not a drinker-really, drinking is not a recommended habit for predators. It slows the reflexes, dulls the perceptions, and knots up the raveled sleeve of care, which always sounded to me like a very bad thing. But here I was, a demon on vacation, attempting the ultimate sacrifice by giving up my powers and becoming human-and so a beer was just the thing for Dipsophobic Dexter.
♥ It is always nice to see the synapses clicking in a way that lets you know your opinion of yourself is sometimes justified.
♥ I found an awful lot of information posted by various human rights groups. They were quite serious, almost shrill, in the things they had to say about what had been done down there. Still, as far as I could tell, nothing had ever come of their protests. After all, it was only human rights. It must be terribly frustrating; PETA seems to get much better results. These poor souls had done their research, published their results detailing rapes, electrodes, and, cattle prods, complete with photos, diagrams, and the names of the hideous inhuman monsters who reveled in inflicting this suffering on the masses. And the hideous inhuman monsters in question retired to the south of France, while the rest of the world boycotted restaurants for mistreating chickens.
♥ Whoever had turned the things on the table into a yodeling potato had taken Kyle, presumably to do something similar to him.
♥ It's always me, isn't it? I'm not really a very nice person, but for some reason it's always me that they come to with their problems. Oh, Dexter, a savage inhuman monster has taken my boyfriend! Well damn it, I'm a savage inhuman monster, too-didn't that entitle me to some rest?
I sighed. Apparently not.
♥ "Wouldn't you run if you knew Danco was after you?"
"No," I said, thinking happily of what I might actually do if I came face-to-face with the Doctor. "I would set some kind of trap for him, and let him come." And then, I thought, but did not say aloud to Deborah.
"Well, Oscar isn't you," she said.
"So few of us are," I said.
♥ "I'm not very good at feeling things, Debs," I said. "And I really don't know at all about this marriage thing. But I don't much like it when you're unhappy."
♥ I have always felt that it was preferable to think with my brain, rather than with certain other wrinkled parts located slightly south. I mean, seriously, don't people ever see themselves, staggering around drooling and mooning, all weepy-eyed and weak-kneed and rendered completely idiotic over something even animals have enough sense to finish quickly so they can get on with more sensible pursuits, like finding fresh meat?
♥ Was this what the human reproductive urge was like, a pointless and powerful desire to replicate wonderful, irreplaceable me, even when the me in question was a monster who truly had no right to live among humans? That would certainly explain how a great many of the monumentally unpleasant cretins I encountered every day came to be. Unlike them, however, I was perfectly aware that the world would be a better place without me in it-I simply cared more about my own feelings in the matter than whatever the world might think. But now here I was eager to spawn more of me, like Dracula creating a new vampire to stand beside him in the dark. I knew it was wrong-but what fun it would be!
♥ What to wear? I could think of no guidelines on what we were wearing this season to a party forced on you to celebrate an unwanted engagement that might turn into a violent confrontation with a vengeful maniac. Clearly brown shoes were out, but beyond that nothing really seemed de rigueur.
♥ I don't pray, of course. What would something like me pray to, and why should It listen to me? And if I found Something, whatever It was, how could It keep from laughing at me, or flinging a lightning bolt down my throat? It would have been very comforting to be able to look to some kind of higher power, but of course, I only knew one higher power. And even though it was strong and swift and clever, and very good at stalking silently through the nightscape, would even the Dark Passenger be enough?
♥ Well, Dexter, here we are. And what would you like to do tonight? At the moment, Rita's couch didn't seem like such a bad place to be. Especially compared to standing here in the nighttime wild. On the far side of this gate were a maniacal vivisectionist, hordes of ravenous reptiles, and a man I was supposed to rescue even though he wanted to kill me. And in this corner, wearing dark trunks, the Mighty Dexter.
♥ It was pointless to wonder. I knew nothing at all about love and I never would. It didn't seem like such a terrible lack to me, although it does make it difficult to understand popular music.
♥ A truly nasty mess, and it served him right that they caught him at the airport. A well-done dismemberment is neat, above all, or so I always say. None of this puddled blood and caked flesh on the walls. It shows a real lack of class.
♥ It may well be that NAMBLA is a rare Hispanic name. But it also stands for North American Man/Boy Love Association, a warm and fuzzy support group that helps pedophiles maintain a positive self-image by assuring them that what they do is perfectly natural. Well, of course it is-so are cannibalism and rape, but really. One mustn't.
♥ Debs joined us before I could think of anything meaningful to say to that, but in truth, I was too surprised at Chutsky's official attitude toward his former comrades. Wouldn't it have been the nice thing to do, to give his old friends a running start or at least a heads-up? I certainly don't pretend to be a paragon of civilized virtue, but if a deranged surgeon was after Vince Masuoka, for instance, I like to think I might find a way to drop a hint into casual conversation by the coffee machine. Pass that sugar, please. By the way-there's a medical maniac after you who wants to lop off all your limbs. Would you like the creamer?
♥ We all have to go sometime. Even so, this would not make my list of top ten preferred ways to perish. Falling asleep and not waking up was number one on my list, and it got rapidly more distasteful after that.
♥ ...and life would at last go on again, with its happy rhythms of pretending and then pouncing.