You may have seen his handsome, slightly blood-spattered face making eye contact from Denver billboards, or perhaps you’ve met him in the well-received series from Showtime. But before Dexter Morgan went live on television, Jeff Lindsay imagined him on the page. Dexter is funnily, scarily back in his third adventure, “Dexter in the Dark.”
Dexter, for those who’ve not yet had the pleasure, is a blood-spatter specialist for the Miami Police Department. He is also a preternaturally self-aware serial killer who only kills people who are worse than he. His targets are the clearly guilty who, for reasons of wealth, stealth or legal loopholes, have slipped through justice’s net. Dexter is a one-man prosecutor, judge and executioner, and once he’s homed in on a criminal there is no court of appeal.
In this latest saga, Dexter is taking an unexpected plunge into matrimony. It’s just the latest step in protecting the cover of himself and his Dark Passenger, the presence in his head who guides and counsels. It is critically important that Dexter present a seamless appearance of normalcy because it “prevents the world at large from seeing him for what he is, which is at best not something one would really like to have sitting across the table when the lights go out – especially if there is silverware present.”
The disguise is evolving: “For the past several years we have had Dating Dexter, designed to present a cheerful and above all normal face to the world. This charming production featured Rita as The Girlfriend, and it was in many ways the ideal arrangement, since she was as uninterested in sex as I am, and yet wanted the Companionship of an Understanding Gentleman. And Dexter really does understand. Not humans, romance and love and all that gabble. No. What Dexter understands is the lethally grinning bottom line, how to find the utterly deserving among Miami’s oh-so-many candidates for that final dark election to Dexter’s modest Hall of Fame.”
Rita brings two children to the marriage, Cody and Astor, who need “Dexter’s special parenting touch to keep their own fledgling Dark Passengers strapped into a safe and snug Dark Car Seat until they could learn how to drive for themselves.”
The nuptial preparations are interrupted by a particularly heinous crime. Two college coeds are found, their bodies charred and their heads missing. In place of each human head is that of a ceramic bull, a touch that is jarring even in a city where Santeria ritual is familiar.
Dexter walks onto the scene with his usual aplomb and finds his world upended. His Dark Passenger, who usually sits at his shoulder feeding him insight, is quiet. Not just quiet, but hiding. It’s something that has never happened to Dexter, and he doesn’t know how to react.
More bodies turn up as victims of what has to be a ritual. Dexter comes to believe that he is being stalked. And then his Dark Passenger disappears. Dexter finds himself closer to being human than he has ever been. He’s alone, and frightened, and finds himself confronting an evil that is ancient and powerful.
The novels in the Dexter series – “Darkly Dreaming Dexter” (2004) and “Dearly Devoted Dexter” (2005) – are built on an original, off-beat premise that is made entertaining by the unique voice of their narrator. The premise will only continue to work, though, if the character grows over the arc of the story, something Lindsay so far accomplishes with ease.
Lindsay has built a natural springboard for the next story, in which Dexter will be a husband and father. It will likely be as much about the next steps Dexter takes in his pretense to humanity as it will be about the Dark Passenger’s next target. It can’t come soon enough.
Readers who have not yet met Dexter can enjoy reading the latest without starting at the beginning. To get the full effect of this original voice, though, it’s better to start with “Darkly Dreaming Dexter.” Dexter is an evolving character, as well as a fascinating and original one.
And for as much as one wouldn’t care to sit across the table from him when the lights go out, particularly if there is silverware in easy reach, one absolutely wants to see how Dexter steps up to the challenge of being a human, at every stage of his evolution, and how he conspires to rid the world of just a few more people whose presence won’t be missed.
Robin Vidimos is a freelance writer who reviews books for The Denver Post and Buzz in the ‘Burbs.
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Fiction
Dexter in the Dark,
by Jeff Lindsay, $23.95
