Darkly Dreaming Dexter is the first book of an eight book series. It follows serial killer and forensic blood splatter analyst Dexter Morgan as he balances his two very different lives while trying to solve a series of brutal murders. This is the book that the TV series Dexter is based on and the first season of the show follows the same investigation as this first book. I watched the show back when it first came out and got to halfway through season 4 before I went to college and stopped watching. When I started watching the show, I didn't know it was based on a book series but when I found out a few years later, the books have always been in the back of my mind as something I wanted to read. I really enjoyed the TV show (the seasons that I saw anyway) and I love a good serial killer book so I was excited to pick this up. Unfortunately, I was not really a fan of this first book. I don't think it is a bad book, by any means, but it feels like one of those books that is pretty polarizing and people either love or hate.
The book pulls no punches and opens with Dexter ready to kill (and then killing) a child murdering priest. We are in his head as he waits, watches, then makes his move. I thought this is a great way to start this story because there is no debating for the reader what Dexter is. He's a serial killer with his own moral code. The actual murdering is done off the page which I wasn't entirely expecting. I didn't think we'd go full torture porn with super detailed descriptions but I did think we would get a bit more gore than we ended up getting (this held true for the rest of the murders in the book). The opening was so strong and pushed the reader right into the deep end with Dexter that I was a little let down that there weren't more on-page murders in the book. After the initial murder, the book does a good job at quickly and efficiently getting the reader introduced to all the people Dexter works with as well as his origin story. The reader is given the bare essentials and we grow to learn more as we go on in the book, but the initial base information was really helpful to quickly get the reader grounded then move along with the plot.
The plot moves very fast in this book. At only 300 pages we start out sprinting and don't slow down very much until the very end. Depending on your personal tastes, this can go either positive or negative. I'm a character-driven reader so I normally prefer slower paced plots in exchange for more deep character or relationship developments. I did feel like the fast pace and shorter page count took away from the potential character development but there were enough quiet moments of introspection and we did get some good relationship moments so I wasn't too bothered. I also fully acknowledge that this is the first book in the series so there is much more room for character development in later books as Dexter's story develops. The plot is based around the police case trying to catch a serial killer so it does have a bit of that procedural aspect to the narrative that I know some people aren't a huge fan of. I will say as someone who loves police procedurals, a good amount of the police work happens off the page. We aren't sitting in on interviews with suspects that are dead ends or following around detectives as they canvass a neighborhood. This is because we are 100% in Dexter's mind and Dexter's POV for the entirety of the book and he's just a crime scene technician, not an actual detective.
After letting this book settle for a few days, I realized what I disliked most and what really made this an overall unenjoyable read to me - Dexter. Yeah, that Dexter, the main character. I think this is where readers can go either way on this book. If you like Dexter, I think you'll enjoy the book but if you don't (like I didn't) then the book becomes a pretty rough read. Since this story is told in first person POV, we are in Dexter's head and it is structure in such a way that he is telling us the story. We get everything filtered through his lens and we get his inner monologue commentary on everything and everyone around him. I generally don't have a problem with first person narratives but holy heck did I want to get out of Dexter's head. When the book started and I realized we'd be in his head for the entirety of the story, I was excited because I figured it would be such a unique and dark perspective to get. That opening chapter was fantastic and I would have loved to stay in that darker headspace for the entirety of the book. However, for the majority of the story, Dexter felt like a fifteen year old boy trying to be edgy by making murder jokes and he would get some pretty good mood swings. I was expecting him to be much more sinister in his head. We know he has these urges, this itch he needs to scratch, because he tells the reader, but I didn't feel the tension in him. There was a question posed in the book of if Dexter could be sleep-murdering these victims because he sleep walks and had almost a sixth sense about the murders. That's a pretty big mystery to figure out but Dexter seemed to be completely uncaring and almost a bit amused at the idea. As a result of his flippant attitude toward this idea I didn't feel any suspense or even want to find out the answer. I wanted to leave his head and go follow the detectives or other crime scene technicians - anywhere except stay in Dexter's head.
The ending of this book, for something so important and potentially life shattering, was pretty meh for me and the reason, for me, was that Dexter didn't seem to do anything - he had no agency. We see him in the beginning of the book as a hunter watching his prey and now, in the moment where those dark skills would come in handy, he comes across like a bumbling local cop. I couldn't get a handle on his character for the entire book and the ending felt like a mismatch of his inner voices battling it out to see who would win Dexter over at the end. If there had been more tension built up throughout the book then that internal struggle could have been super powerful. I think the theme for a lot of my issues with the book is that the elements were all there, but the pieces didn't fall into place so it overall didn't come together well.
To end on a positive note, Lindsay has some really great almost poetic lines in the book. The narrative is in first person, and it almost feels like there's another personality in Dexter that wants to write a literary novel and thinks in this really flowery prose. As a contrast, Dexter is much more blue collar and down to earth with his observations. These sudden tone shifts were really jarring to me when I was reading but this was the first book where I took pictures of the prose because there were some really good lines.
Here's an example:
"The very body parts seemed to sing to me, a rhapsody of bloodless wonder that lightened by heart and filled by veins with an intoxicating sense of awe."
Then the next paragraph:
"I sat in my apartment, rubbing my sleep-crusted eyes and thinking about the stow I had just watched. It has been as near perfect as a press conference could be without free food and nudity."
I thought both lines were really great characterization lines, but I just had a hard time marrying them together as being from the same person. Again, we the reader are drowning in Dexter's head so all the lines in the book feel like they should be his direct thoughts. There wasn't really any room for some third party narrator to be stepping in and giving descriptions. I borrowed this book from the library, but I almost want to buy a copy just to go through and highlight all the lines that I really liked.
Overall, this was an interesting premise with a fast paced plot full of death and serial killers but I found the first person narration to be annoying and I couldn't get a good handle on the tone the book was going for.
304 pages.
As a final note, if this book's premise sounds interesting but you also don't like the execution or some of the narrative style choices, I'd recommend trying the TV show. I'm only halfway through season 4 but I found the show to be a bit darker in tone (but still has some good comedy moments to break up the subject matter), Dexter's characterization is more concrete, and we get much more out of the other characters that really add depth to the show. There were some pretty big plot changes between this book and season 1 of the show as well.
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