Darkly Dreaming Dexter

51Q3J1TK9TLSo there’s this guy, Dexter, right? And he’s a CSI guy in Miami, analyzing blood spatter patterns to determine facts about murders. And he has a TV show, which I have watched two seasons of now, and which first season was based on a book that I have recently read. The thing about Dexter is, his off-hours job is to be a serial killer. Many people might find that to be distasteful reading material, but Dexter, see, he’s not like other serial killers.

As the first season of the show and Darkly Dreaming Dexter explain (in very similar, but eventually divergent, ways), Dexter is different from other serial killers. He was adopted by a cop who saw the darkness inside the growing boy, understood what it was, and chose to channel it in constructive ways rather than doom him to a lusterless existence in the mental health system. Dexter has a code that he follows, in which he only murders people who are themselves killers, and he only acts when he is completely certain of their guilt. And that life has worked out pretty well for him: he’s able to fake charm while making use of extensive wit, maintaining shams of relationships with co-workers, his sister, and a girlfriend; and every few months, he strikes again. All that is about to change, however, with the appearance of a new serial killer in Miami, one to whom Dexter feels a disturbingly close bond. (When the guy who stalks around murdering people, even really bad people, is disturbed? That can’t be good.)

What makes the Dexter series stand out from the stacks of murder mystery books and shows out there isn’t that he’s a serial killer himself. Well, okay, that does make him stand out, but what makes him appealing to me is how very funny he is. And the way he views people, and views himself as a separate species from them. What could have been a weakness of the show in copying so closely from the book feels more like a strength to me: that they managed to capture the First Person Bemused viewpoint Dexter brought to my reading experience. In any event, very good book, and slim enough to easily read much more quickly than the show could be watched. But if anything, I’d recommend doing both.

7 thoughts on “Darkly Dreaming Dexter

  1. Johnny

    You’re the third or fourth person whose opinion I respect that has good things to say about this. Time to add it to the Netflix queue — whee!

  2. Mike Kozlowski

    I was waiting for the part in this where you were going to say, “Okay, not really that last part,” but unless I skimmed more than usual, it never came.

    So, that’s weird!

  3. Chris Post author

    Yeah, no, that part is pretty much factual. He’s more of a lab tech than a cop per se, but yes. It works pretty well for him.

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