Darkly Dreaming Dexter and Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
Darkly Dreaming Dexter and Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay are fun, macabre, witty, page-turning reads, although I give Dearly Devoted a higher recommendation.
The happenings in the Showtime Dexter show have some loose basis in Darkly Dreaming Dexter. Loose basis. The arc of what the show calls the "ice truck killer" goes down differently in the book, and the show tosses some fresh things in purely for being an episodic show.
Our first person narrator, Dexter Morgan, is a serial killer who only kills other serial killers per "The Harry Code" taught him by his foster father and works as a blood splatter expert/lab geek for the Miami police as part of his cover self. He doesn't feel human emotions but pretends the best he can to help him avoid being caught, cultivating relationships with a woman he dates as a kind of beard and his foster sister, Deborah. He's also funny as hell. With helping his sister try to get out of wearing hooker gear as a member of vice and into the homicide department, he ends up drawing attention to himself as somebody who understands the serial killer mindset, which is not something he wants....
Darkly Dreaming Dexter has one twist I found ridiculous that led to another twist that I found ridiculous. (I haven't seen enough of the Showtime show to know if the "ice truck killer" is the same person as in the novel.) Otherwise, I really enjoyed the book.
In Dearly Devoted Dexter, Dexter has to pretend even harder to be normal now that events from the end of Darkly Dreaming have made Sergeant Doakes even more suspicious of him, to the point that Doakes is staking him out every night. That means more time with Rita and her kids, having a beer, watching TV, and feeling his killer self chafe at not being allowed to get out there. He has a pedophiliac photographer he needs to nail, dammit! In the meantime, he gets drawn into one of Deb's cases that also involves Doakes and a human monster with a very twisted methodology who keeps his victims alive and in front of a mirror the whole time so they can watch the process. The twist with Rita's kids really tickled me, as did an unfortunate event that came from him carrying an ornate ring that had come off a severed finger around in one of his pockets.
It's fun watching him not quite feel the right things but sometimes behave in the societally proper way and almost get it just from thinking about what he should do to look normal. Then a woman will come on to him out of what seems to him as out of the blue and his reaction is "WTF, DO NOT WANT."
***
The Dexter show has its own pleasures, though it can be too over the top in a ridiculous way for me at times. I've seen the first four episodes, I think. It depicts the foster father/son bonding over the right way and reasons to murder people in a wonderfully creeptastic way in flashback scenes, and just try to put your finger on how wrong the relationship between Dexter and his foster sister can occasionally feel. Baby's First Human Kill is darkly hilarious for how rightfully inept he is. The people in his life that he doesn't quite feel for are nonetheless helpful in his creative solving process. The red strings used in his blood splatter crime scene work to determine vectors have a definite visual poetry. LaGuerta's hate-on for Deb can be entertaining, as in the running bit about Deb being stuck in a tiny booth watching endless stacks of security camera tapes and how Deb's hooker contacts immediately tag LaGuerta as Deb's pimp for how she works her hard and takes all the profit from her.
I like that the Miami here isn't all white as it sometimes is on TV. Spanish is spoken on and off as a matter of course. People sweat in the heat and get a bit skanky looking. (Miami is also a character of its own in the books.)
The happenings in the Showtime Dexter show have some loose basis in Darkly Dreaming Dexter. Loose basis. The arc of what the show calls the "ice truck killer" goes down differently in the book, and the show tosses some fresh things in purely for being an episodic show.
Our first person narrator, Dexter Morgan, is a serial killer who only kills other serial killers per "The Harry Code" taught him by his foster father and works as a blood splatter expert/lab geek for the Miami police as part of his cover self. He doesn't feel human emotions but pretends the best he can to help him avoid being caught, cultivating relationships with a woman he dates as a kind of beard and his foster sister, Deborah. He's also funny as hell. With helping his sister try to get out of wearing hooker gear as a member of vice and into the homicide department, he ends up drawing attention to himself as somebody who understands the serial killer mindset, which is not something he wants....
Darkly Dreaming Dexter has one twist I found ridiculous that led to another twist that I found ridiculous. (I haven't seen enough of the Showtime show to know if the "ice truck killer" is the same person as in the novel.) Otherwise, I really enjoyed the book.
In Dearly Devoted Dexter, Dexter has to pretend even harder to be normal now that events from the end of Darkly Dreaming have made Sergeant Doakes even more suspicious of him, to the point that Doakes is staking him out every night. That means more time with Rita and her kids, having a beer, watching TV, and feeling his killer self chafe at not being allowed to get out there. He has a pedophiliac photographer he needs to nail, dammit! In the meantime, he gets drawn into one of Deb's cases that also involves Doakes and a human monster with a very twisted methodology who keeps his victims alive and in front of a mirror the whole time so they can watch the process. The twist with Rita's kids really tickled me, as did an unfortunate event that came from him carrying an ornate ring that had come off a severed finger around in one of his pockets.
It's fun watching him not quite feel the right things but sometimes behave in the societally proper way and almost get it just from thinking about what he should do to look normal. Then a woman will come on to him out of what seems to him as out of the blue and his reaction is "WTF, DO NOT WANT."
***
The Dexter show has its own pleasures, though it can be too over the top in a ridiculous way for me at times. I've seen the first four episodes, I think. It depicts the foster father/son bonding over the right way and reasons to murder people in a wonderfully creeptastic way in flashback scenes, and just try to put your finger on how wrong the relationship between Dexter and his foster sister can occasionally feel. Baby's First Human Kill is darkly hilarious for how rightfully inept he is. The people in his life that he doesn't quite feel for are nonetheless helpful in his creative solving process. The red strings used in his blood splatter crime scene work to determine vectors have a definite visual poetry. LaGuerta's hate-on for Deb can be entertaining, as in the running bit about Deb being stuck in a tiny booth watching endless stacks of security camera tapes and how Deb's hooker contacts immediately tag LaGuerta as Deb's pimp for how she works her hard and takes all the profit from her.
I like that the Miami here isn't all white as it sometimes is on TV. Spanish is spoken on and off as a matter of course. People sweat in the heat and get a bit skanky looking. (Miami is also a character of its own in the books.)