Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay

As the name of the book suggests, Darkly Dreaming Dexter is a disturbing story that delves deeply into the mind of a killer, namely Dexter Morgan. Alternately macabre and wryly amusing, Jeff Lindsay’s debut novel is a thriller that puts us in touch with the sick reasoning that motivates a person to kill and kill and kill again.

To the outside world, Dexter Morgan is simply a forensic blood spatter expert working with the Miami Police Department. His foster father, Harry, was an outstanding policeman before he died, his foster-sister is also a detective working Vice with the Miami PD. But the seemingly normal family and upbringing hides the fact that there is much, much more to Dexter than meets the eye. He has a secret “hobby” he is a serial killer, unable to fight the urge to kill, controlled by an inner voice that he refers to as the Dark Passenger. Thanks to his foster-father’s intervention, Dexter justifies his urges by only killing people who “deserve to die”. In this case he sticks to people who abuse and murder children, forcing them to face their sins and admit their crimes before dispatching them.

Another serial killer has emerged in Miami with bodies beginning to be discovered along, or just off, the Tamiami Trail. All of them have been carefully and cleanly cut into small pieces and wrapped in garbage bags and, most unusually of all, the scenes are completely devoid of blood. Dexter, as part of the forensic team is allowed on the scene but his reaction upon seeing the corpses is much different to other officers. He tends to admire the “artistic style” of the killer almost as if he appreciates his work. He expressed to us a need to be close to each new corpse for reasons that are other than simply professional. If you’re starting to get a crawling sensation across your skin from this, then this is exactly the reaction I had, on more than one occasion.

This new series of murders are different to the usual killings that Dexter has been so successful in solving in the past. It’s almost as this killer is calling out to him personally, so much so that Dexter begins to experience dreams. These dreams become disturbing when they pre-empt each new murder. Suddenly Dexter has a new emotion to deal with - fear. Could it be possible that he has lost control to the Dark Passenger to such an extent that he has begun to kill while asleep, allowing his “other self” to take over without his knowledge?

There is no doubt that Dexter is an anti-hero, a very disturbed individual, but at times there is a tendency to forget his darker side. On the one hand he works with the police, solves murders, obviously loves his foster-sister and displays a quick wit and sense of humour. Of course, on the other hand, he is a killer, barely in control of himself who doesn’t even consider himself human.

In trying to understand how he has become the monster he is, we learn a lot about him and his past. Oddly enough though, not even Dexter can give us a definitive reason for why he is occasionally consumed by the need to kill. By the story’s end we are filled in enough to at least sympathise with what he has been through and the emotional trauma that he must have endured.

More than your average psychological thriller, Darkly Dreaming Dexter tales you up close and personal and right into the mind of a killer. The murders occur thick and fast ensuring a high-paced story filled with a lot of forensic evidence and crime scenes, complete with plenty of detail, so the squeamish should be warned.

The dark, sometime gruesome tone of the book is softened by the wryly amused tone of voice that the story is told in. This is a character trait of Dexter and while it helps him assimilate with the humans he is imitating in order to blend in, I thought it tended to make him too passive and likable. I was looking for some sort of hint that the Dark Passenger occasionally won the battle inside his head in the form of anger, a short temper, even irritability but it never surfaced. As far as I was concerned, this made the scenes where he killed a little less believable, too out of character, if you will. The same dark themes run through the classic The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson and even though the idea is very similar, Thompson pulled off the dark and insidious nature of a killer a lot more convincingly.

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy Darkly Dreaming Dexter, I did. It’s a coldly riveting story that completely drew me in, torn between wanting to like Dexter and despising him for what he is. Jeff Lindsay has written a convincing psychological profile of a killer and while it is at times disturbing, I found it completely entertaining.