1/5 Mitochlorians
  by M. Rossmore (North Miami Beach, FL United States)
Lindsay has managed to do to Dexter what George Lucas did to "The Force" in Phantom Menace: he attempted to "explain" him, and did so using the stupidest, most ridiculous idea possible. Just like the idea of The Force was ruined by "mitochlorians", the Dexter mythos has been utterly wrecked by this book.

Based on everything we've seen in the past two books, Dexter's issues were purely psychological: severe childhood trauma manifested into a disconnect of emotions and an urge to hurt and kill things. That is plausible.

But introducing a supernatural element into this is plain ridiculous. As I read I hoped that Lindsay was simply making Dexter's imagination run a bit wild, but it turns out he wasn't. Turns out our Dearly Disconnected Dexter's Dark Passenger is really the byproduct of some ancient god's magical trickery.

On top of that, the book version of Rita continues to be a screechy, cartoonish character. The TV version of her character along with the children's on-screen portrayals are far, far better than what was written in the books. Thank goodness at least the TV show continues to get better as it goes along.

Avoid this book. It ruins everything you like about Dexter.

3/5 Dearly Dissapointing Dexter
  by M. Daneker (Spinnerstown, Pa USA)
Jeff Lindsey was definitely on to something when he invented the serial-killer-gone-vigilante in Darkly Dreaming Dexter, an entertaining if not quite polished twist on both the crime-murder mystery and the serial killer tale. But, he hit his stride with the excellent Dearly Devoted Dexter, a pitch-perfect novel of sarcasm and wit with plenty of blood and character development. It's unfortunate then, that he trips over Dexter in the Dark.

As we re-acquaint ourselves with the witty blood-letter, we find him beaten and bemused. Dexter has lost it, all he's got is homicidal step-kids, a $500 a head wedding caterer, a short-fused sister and a dearly dumb-witted fiancé, but no dark passenger.

Dexter spends the entire book castrated, unable to kill or even understand the homicidal impulse. Worse, he sets about training Astor and Cody to be just like him, a disturbing and overly coincidental plot element. In fact, it seems as if Lindsey wrote the entire novel to explain why damaged kids become lurid psychopaths. It doesn't work.

The plot here is as thin as the paper it's written on. The father of all Dark Passengers wants Dexter, the anomaly of serial killers gone. The feint whiff of the supernatural that we got in the first Dexter book is back in force this time and it's a mood killer. Dexter works best when it's him against a normal world, when the world becomes as twisted as him, it all gets foggy, like a bad LSD hit.

Lindsey also stumbles on his use of, count them, four narrations. We have first persons "It" being the thing that makes people kill, these parts are boring, over written and pointless. Then we have Dexter, thankfully for most of the book. There's also a third person narrating "the watcher" at the end of most, but not all chapters, and finally there is one, count it, one part of one chapter with a flat out third person "Lindsey" narration that is completely off tone with everything else. The book would be an amateur read if it wasn't that Lindsey had already established that he can write.

There little to offer here. Dexter mopes around, fails to figure out the crime, gets captured, barely manages to save the children and ends up married, that's all you get in 300 pages. It's decidedly distracting Dexter. The book is, if nothing else, the funniest of the three novels. Dexter may not kill, but his wit is sharper than ever and his observations keen and biting. The third Dexter book pales behind the second season of the Showtime series they spawned, Dexter on the Television is, for now, better than Dexter in print.


3/5 Disappointing Departure for Dexter
  by Miranda Prince (USA)
Dexter in the Dark, the third book in Jeff Lindsay's series about a serial killer with -- if not a conscience, at least a code -- is quite a departure, and not in a good way. There's a lot of supernatural stuff going on in this one, which was largely absent from the first two novels. I agree with the other reviewer who said Dexter's at his best when he's pitted against a normal world -- Dexter himself is weird enough. We don't need ancient gods piled on.

The business with Dexter's stepchildren following in his footsteps is just ugly, and not especially believable. The vast, vast majority of children who survive childhood trauma do not grow up to become sociopaths; what are the odds that Dexter would find himself stepfather to two who do?

The cardinal sin of this novel, though, is that it was kind of boring. I had to force myself to get through it, and that's not something that's ever happened with a Dexter novel before.

Here's hoping Lindsay drops the supernatural mumbo-jumbo and gets back to basics for his next Dexter book.



1/5 Yeah, pretty much awful
  by Luke Meyers (Seattle, WA USA)
Jeff Lindsay has taken a wrong turn. In the first two books, he got a good start on an enjoyable and satisfying series; a little formulaic, sure, but these are crime novels at heart and there's a long tradition of that so it's hardly anything to apologize for. The strength of the series has never been the writing -- it's cheeky and cute, sure, but starkly unsophisticated and rather repetitive. I roll my eyes every time he tosses the word "sibilant" -- apparently a new vocabulary word he's very excited about -- into a description of the Dark Passenger, sticking out like a sore thumb. I believe I've seen it three or four times, which is enough to be conspicuous in a series that's otherwise written at a grade school reading level. However, all of this is forgivable in the face of a fun, companionable, and of course twisted narrator, as well as a decent job of world-building (though the supporting cast are fleshed out much better in the TV series -- they're a little one-dimensional in the books, by comparison).

What's not forgivable is to take such an abrupt turn on the third book in the series, shifting genres abruptly and in a truly unsatisfying manner. This is no longer a crime novel where we can delight in the cleverness of our dark narrator. No, now it's a lame supernatural thriller. The Dexter we know and love is now whiny, pathetic, and ineffectual. With regard to the main plot, he's practically inert -- he spends most of the time just having stuff happen to him and complaining about how unfair it is, never seizing control of the situation. The wedding subplot runs along similar lines and paints an increasingly unlikeable portrait of our former friend. It simply doesn't ring true to me that the Dexter of the previous two novels, or of the TV show, would be so cowed by his insecure fiance, nerdy co-worker, and pretentious caterer that he couldn't find a way out of paying $500 a plate to have his wedding catered. The interpersonal conflict surrounding that whole situation is mawkish and lame.

Dexter's character has been gutted. The Dark Passenger was a fun metaphor, a way for Dexter to explain to himself (and the reader) the way his darkened mind works. This book offensively undercuts all of that and replaces it with trashy, poorly-considered hocus pocus. It's a truly amateurish, slapdash effort and a tragic turn for a promising series. I hope that Lindsay will recognize from all the negative reviews he's getting that he needs to rescue the series in the next installment (if there is one, which is probably likely only because of the TV show), but given his poor judgement and mediocre writing ability (at least, as displayed in these books), I'm not holding my breath for a miracle.

1/5 Major Disappointment
  by Tom (Toronto,, Ontario, Canada)
A very silly, laughably incredible mistake of a book that should never have seen the light of day and that seriously compromises the Dexter series. Let's hope that Dexter IV will be a return to form. It can't be worse.