Dexter in the Dark - Jeff Lindsay

...the characters, the murders, and Dexter himself, his story, why he kills, why he is a killer, Harry's code, his job etc... the fact that Jeff lindsay got me to do the impossible, which was actually understand and grow to be fond of a serial killer, astounded me.

So up until this book, I would rate the entire series and books as high as any mark anything could get, until this book, and I am so thankful that the series did not mirror ...
...no idea who or what Dexter is.

So, I would like to think I have a reasonable grasp on the books and the t.v. series and the character of Dexter, to which the books and t.v. series have been pretty much aligned, until now...

Dexter is blood spatter analyst working for Miami police department and he is a serial killer. He needs to kill, he is sociopathic, he is dead inside, he has no emotion, he fakes emotion to pass off ... more

I was in two minds about writing this review, on the one hand, I have read the first two books and watched the first three seasons of the t.v. series, and loved every single minute of the whole lot, the stories, the characters, the murders, and Dexter himself, his story, why he kills, why he is a killer, Harry's code, his job etc... the fact that Jeff lindsay got me to do the impossible, which was actually understand and grow to be fond of a serial killer, astounded me.

So up until this book, I would rate the entire series and books as high as any mark anything could get, until this book, and I am so thankful that the series did not mirror the book in anyway, shape or form, as this book completely ruined the book series for me.

At this point I feel I need to say do not read on if you have not read this book and do not want to know what happens and why I hate this book as they are all so intertwined that the plot and important things that happen need to be explored a little.

--------------SPOILER ALERT--------------------------------------------------------

O.K. ...... If you are reading now it is because you either have read the book or really want to know why I hate the book so much when I have loved it all so much up to this point, or, you have no idea who or what Dexter is.

So, I would like to think I have a reasonable grasp on the books and the t.v. series and the character of Dexter, to which the books and t.v. series have been pretty much aligned, until now...

Dexter is blood spatter analyst working for Miami police department and he is a serial killer. He needs to kill, he is sociopathic, he is dead inside, he has no emotion, he fakes emotion to pass off as human, but in his mind, and he is very well educated about himself, the only thing human about him is the fact that he looks human and has skin.

We understand that as a boy, 3 or 4 year old, he and his brother witnessed their mother being hacked to pieces with chainsaws by drug dealers in a shipping container, the policeman on the scene at the time, who we later find out was intimately invlved with Dexters mother, took Dexter home, adopted him and raised him. The other boy, being older and more disturbed, went off to homes and institutions, he comes back as an adult in the first series as the Ice Truck Killer.

Luckily for dexter, the officer that adopted him, Harry, is a very experienced detective and has somewhat of a grasp of serial killers, sociopaths.... and easily identifies certain behaviours in Dexter as a child, from killing animals to later feeling he wants to do the same thing to people. As Harry understands the serial killer mind, Harry decides the best thing to do to protect Dexter is to not only make him good at it, but teach him not to get caught, and most importantly, he gives Dexter a code, which basically dictates his ethics and morales, which basically means, kill only those who deserve to be killed. Which, as Dexter gets older, being in the police service seemed the obvious choice due to the access to information and he is able to perfect his own methods of determining if someone is guilty, even if the courts have deemed someone not guilty by technicality, Dexter has his own ways of getting proof outside of the law.

So we have Dexter, he is a serial killer, he has a code, he kills bad guys, and lots of them, in the second series we explore why it is that Dexter likes to kill. We determine that he has a 'dark passenger', now to me, the way we are led to understand this 'Dark Passenger' is that it is a part of Dexter's need, like a drug, to kill. It is the thing that has developed in Dexter's personality that fills the void of his inability to experience and truly show emotion, as was stripped from him when his mother was brutally murdered, and when Dexter does kill, both he and the 'dark passenger' are satisfied and feel good and I suppose feeling something is better then nothing, even though we know there is an emotional Dexter in there as he cares deeply for his sister, his girlfriend and her kids, but this is something gradually being explored throughout th series. But here it gets confusing and I even feel I poorly described the feeling that Dexter feels, i.e. Dexter and the Dark Passenger, are not seperate entities, it is just that 'NEED' in Dexter to kill, that need to have this urge fed.

And this is where i have a problem with this book. Up until now there has been absolutely no mention of anything supernatural, of omniscient beings or eons old sentient entities. And right from the beginning of the book, we are tormented with an introduction about this entity that from what i can tell, just exists, it is everywhere, and no where, it has watched the lands of earth rise and fall, volcanoes spew forth the magma that later became the masses we know as continents, the insects and pathetic tiny creatures that spewed forth from goo that spawned life as we know it. Jeff lindsay describes this being as being incredibly bored, for a laugh, he would get monkeys to beat the crap out of each other, they were stupid, but one day, the monkey showed independant thought, and the entity thought, how interesting. And when traumatic things happened to us more sentient beings, these entities, as he apparently is not the only one, is able to enter our soul and become a 'dark Passenger'.

From this point on, in the mind of Jeff Lindsay, that every serial killer in the world is carrying a 'Dark Passenger', it sounds a bit scientology, Thetans, to me.

But if Jeff Lindsay wanted to write a scifi novel and explore his possible Scientology leanings, then he should have started another series of books around that, with different characters or at the very least, been up front with the Dexter series to begin with, I would not have wasted my time and allowed myself to become emotionallly attached to this character.

Instead I am sitting here, angered that Jeff has done this to our beloved Dexter!
He has turned Dexter into a joke, a mere puppet, that all along he was weak without this passenger to give him courage, to hone his skills and that without the passenger, he would have been just been possibly a normal person??

Dexter has an evil spirit inside him...... I'm sorry but that just does not wash with me!

I read an interview with jeff, pre-book launch, and he was saying that it was called Dexter in the Dark because his 'Dark Passenger' leaves him. At the time I thought this to mean that the need leaves him, that maybe some emotion starts coming back, some form of humanity and the thirst to kill is gone, he no longer hungers for it, but obviously a serial killer comes into the picture that either affects Dexter or his beloved family and Dexter, without that sociopathic side in him, does not know what to do and that something big would happen to make it come back.

But in this, quite the opposite happens, Dexter's 'Dark Passenger', I should just call him 'Steve', so as not too confuse people, is scared off by another more fierce and scarier entity.... .... Pathetic!

Unfortunately, this whole spirit thing has completely ruined any semblence of a story worth mentioning, the only other thing of interest is that little Cody appears to have a 'Dark Passenger' as well and Dexter contemplates the code and how to apply it.

Any other great character moments are completely overshadowed by the sheer ludicracy of this whole thing, so in my mind, there is no great character development for any of the other characters, no funny little side stories, just poo!

I absolutely do not recommend this book to anyone, I don't know why Jeff's publishers allowed him to release this dribble, which is reflected by how the t.v. series did not follow this story and kept it fiction based, not science fiction... relief!

Having said that i will buy the next book, hopefully Dexter will wake up and it was all a dream!!!

Sorry this was more a rant then a review, and I hope others that have read this will comment as I don't know anyone that has read this as well, so it would be interesting if other peole had an opinion about this whole debacle!

Thanks for baring with me and don't buy this book!

 

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