16. A book you’ve seen adapted: Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay

List Progress: 19/30

When it comes to a guilty pleasure, style is key. Everything related to the Dexter franchise is gory and morally twisted, but the upbeat style of author Jeff Lindsay (and the television show inspired by his books) keeps the story of a vigilante serial killer from being too grim. Darkly Dreaming Dexter, the first book in a series, follows Dexter Morgan, a serial killer who only kills other serial killers. His foster father was a policeman and realized from an early age that Dexter was going to become a killer, so instead of trying to curb that instinct, he instilled a strict moral code within him. Dexter works as a blood splatter analyst with the Miami police, where his foster sister Deb is trying to make her own name and reputation. But Dexter’s rules are challenged when a showy new killer begins staging murder scenes that seem to speak to Dexter and his internal Dark Passenger personally.The book is told in the first person from inside Dexter’s head, so the reader gets to see his perverse amusement and joy at finding another monster like himself, and that is mostly enough to carry the story along, if not quite enough to stick the landing.

An issue that both this book and the television show contend with is that Dexter and his serial killer opponents are the only truly interesting parts of the story. So much attention and care is put into developing Dexter that the people around him end up feeling like caricatures and chess pieces, exactly as stupid as needed to let him keep getting away. When Dexter gets a sort of psychic premonition that leads him to a confrontation with the other killer at four in the morning in an isolated area, literally none of the trained police detectives have any questions about what he was doing there. Detective LaGuerta gets the worst of this, a Cuban woman positioned as an idiotic backbiter with a crush on Dexter seemingly just to play into Spicy Latina stereotypes. The prose keeps saying that his sister Deb is developing into a smart investigator, but her brother is holding her hand every step of the way. Dexter is an interesting character in the middle of a wasteland. 

Enjoying the Dexter franchise involves turning off a lot of parts of your brain, the ones that suspend disbelief and the ones that suspend moral thoughts about vigilantism and justice via retribution. But if a reader can turn those off, Darkly Dreaming Dexter is an undoubtedly fun ride, even with a bit of a rushed ending. Lindsay has a way with atmosphere and action, and the development of a strong narrative voice for Dexter himself. Perhaps later in the series, the world around the star fills out in a more satisfying way, but even without that, it makes sense that audiences keep coming back for more, even across mediums.

Would I Recommend It: Soft yes.