Darkly Dreaming Dexter (Dexter Series #1) Book

Like so many others, I loved the Showtime series and wanted to check out the original source material. I was very disappointed indeed. Since a lot of other people seem to have liked it, it may just be a matter of taste, but...

The characters are two-dimensional cliches that can't tie their own shoelaces, except for the daringly deductive Dexter, who *can* tie his own shoelaces. Which makes him a genius. I recall seeing someone else comment that Darkly Dreaming Dexter needs to "show, don't tell." Dexter's interior monologue *tells* the reader about his code, and how careful he is, yet with one exception he's clumsy and messy throughout the book. I found the authorial voice to not be "darkly humorous," but frequently silly and always snidely sarcastic. The interior monologue harps constantly on the same few themes, especially his lack of emotions and the crippling stupidity of every living being in Miami.

It quite fails to function as a mystery; at no time does anyone successfully piece together evidence or clues to get closer to catching the offscreen serial killer the book focuses on. The obvious exception is when Dexter the genius follows psychic visions and prophetic dreams ("intuition," presumably) to where the killer predicts they will meet. Any actual plot development happens at the very beginning and very end of the book, with the intervening chapters basically being nothing but red herrings and Dexter watching police be stupid. At one point Dexter's sister Deb, a police officer, comes to a correct conclusion before Dexter. He immediately tells her that she is right "for all the wrong reasons," which is blatantly untrue and (presumably) only there to make him sound smarter.

While I had a pretty good idea of how the end would turn out, having seen the first two seasons of the TV series, I was shocked at how little foreshadowing or fanfare there was of the big revelations. The deus ex machina leads Dexter to where he needs to go, things happen in a hurry, book ends with an epilogue -- half of which is written to be super-vague so as to build suspense about which characters lived or died.

For a moment, having finished, I was curious enough about the development of the only potentially interesting plot thread at the end of the book to consider reading the second. I think I'll just find a synopsis on the web to see if it's developed at all in future books.

On reflection, I am very impressed with the television show's producers' ability to pick out the nuggets of greatness buried in the book and make something so wonderful out of them.