4/5 Deftly Analyzing Dexter
  by P. Alther
All in all, this is a decent read. I feel that I do not need to go into a summation of the plot since many of our colleagues have adequately summed it up already. I will do my best not to give anything away. I will also add that, having not seen the series, this will be purely a review of the written material.

First, I will mention some of the issues that I had with this novel.
Nothing in it really jumped out and surprised me in the book, accept it did have a very interesting twist at the end which, I must admit, seemed a bit too cliché. Dexters internal monologues were also very repetitive, continuously reminding us how he isn't human and has no emotions, yet he does exhibit emotions such as sadness and joy (however, this may be an allusion for things to come in later novels, but I'm not sure).
The continuous references to how tough the streets of Miami were and how heinous crimes were blazé, and petty crimes a normal occurrence, was a bit annoying. This repetitive pattern of Dexter's internal monologues reminding you over and over again that he isn't 'human' that never seemed to go anywhere different and the author continuously reminding you that Miami is a tough city with crazy drivers (as if he believe that you didn't get the idea in the first 150 pages), just ran on too much. It seems as if Lindsay was padding the book to make it longer.
I should also mention that LaGuerta and Deborah are extremely annoying. Deborah was the most in the beginning because all she did was whine and complain, and was always running to Dexter for help instead of thinking for herself.
That being said, I can go into what I enjoyed about it.

Dexter is an interesting character, and seems to be rather unique in the world of Crime thrillers. A serial killer who only kills people who deserve it, a very interesting twist on things. He has no righteous ambition, no want to save the world or rid it of crime (although he does have a soft spot for children, and a particular disdain for people who go after children). He merely kills for his own pleasure, but only kills those who 'deserve to be killed'. People who are guilty of heinous crimes and have surpassed the justice system.
I also enjoyed the character of Doakes, and I hope to see his character expanded upon.

I am only giving this book 4/5 because it didn't impress me too much and was a bit too predictable and cliché riddled. However, I could tell that there was something there that Lindsay didn't quite grasp, but was within reach. Lindsay is a good writer, although some of the expressions he had Dexter saying were completely out of character (He made a comparison of something with opossum farts, if I'm not mistaken), but then again maybe he was meant to break his suave character with something crude.

It's a pretty quick read, and it was able to keep my attention. It's not a masterpiece, but a good way to kill a boring Saturday afternoon (pardon the pun), and I think I'll read the next novel to see how he develops that already devious character who, despite his own denial of it, does have the hints of a human side.

Overall Review: It's a good book to read for crime enthusiasts, but wasn't as psychological as I had hoped it would be, however it was still interesting and good to read. I was actually going to give the book 3/5, but I had to give it an extra star for originality and such a fascinating protagonist like Dexter.

4/5 Review
  by Gloria Knight
Shipping took a long time. It was for my book club and I barely got it in time to read it before our meeting.

4/5 Some Interesting Internalization Going On Here
  by Maria R. Hooley (Oklahoma)
What I like best not only about this book but also the series is the way the internalization is handled. While Dexter is extremely dark, he is also very funny, which, considering the subject matter at hand, is a really good thing.

4/5 And there it is ... fully formed on page 1
  by O. Buxton (Highgate, UK)
Having come to Jeff Lindsay's Dexter via the excellent HBO television series and having read the fourth instalment first, it was fascinating to finally get back to the original source material from which the mature Dexter - literary and televisual - developed.

The nearest comparison to Dexter Morgan I can think of - and this may well be an indictment on the breadth of my reading - is Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal the Cannibal appeared to evolve by himself, through Thomas Harris' patient midwifery (and, dare I say it, Anthony Hopkins' obstetrics), from a fairly one-dimensional plot device in Red Dragon into the many, arguably overly, splendoured thing that electrified Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. Sticklers can complain that by 2004's Hannibal Rising, Hannibal had jettisoned most of the personality originally given him: his childhood backstory had transformed from a cat-killing "textbook sociopath" to an animal-loving tortured Eastern European refugee.

Like Dr. Lecter, Dexter has had four novels and an excellent screen rendering with which to define himself. So it was interesting to see, by comparison how well-formed Dexter and his world were at the outset.

Very, as it turns out. You open the book and, as Dexter himself might say, "there it is". Here there is no tentative flowering: Dexter's Miami, the bloody moon presiding over it, the perfidious individuals in it and their various passengers and his back story are all there in vivid Kodachrome, from the outset. It is an extraordinary achievement for a relatively unknown writer to show this much sophistication: to conceive a microcosm so wholly and robustly from the outset, rather than figuring it out on the fly. And Lindsay writes brilliantly - wittily, knowingly, and he paints his characters beautifully. When you are on a commuter train with your nose buried in a book covered with knives and blood spatter, it feels odd to be giggling uncontrollably, but - well, there it is. Lindsay's voice is as unique as his premise (a likeable sociopathic serial killer!), and these books are more than worth while reading for those reasons alone.

So it feels churlish to pick holes, but there are some. That his creation sprung fully fledged onto first page speaks eloquently about Lindsay's inspiration, but more equivocally about the following instalments: the creative act is done; what follows are variations on the theme. The dramatic set-up each time is the same: A dilemma presents itself, and is resolved, and however implausibly, Dexter's cover is left intact. The wheel turns full cycle. Characters around Dexter do develop from instalment to instalment, but not in such a way as to upset the requirements of that narrative. But more perplexingly, given how well realised the Dexter premise is, the plots tend to meander and fizzle rather than reach a crescendo. Jeff Lindsay might not have created his characters or their world on the fly, but it feels rather a lot like that's how he writes his plots.

Lindsay's books increasingly hanker towards a supernatural element which the TV series has de-emphasised, making scarce mention of the "Dark Passenger" or the seemingly astral communication by which it connects with Dexter's antagonistic elements. HBO made a deft call here: Lindsay's endings are weak, and tend to rely on the proverbial ten tonne weight to kill off the story because, having set up and laid out a wonderful, vivid and funny scenario, Lindsay doesn't seem to have the wherewithal to bring it all back home. So, in Darkly Dreaming Dexter, a poorly explored supernatural element popped up as a cheap way to a resolution (how did Dexter know where to go? He just *felt* it!). The screenwriters at HBO have a little more experience I guess, because the (marked) differences between Lindsay's resolution of Darkly Dreaming Dexter and the first season finale of the TV series are all in HBO's favour.

Nonetheless, a well recommended read.

Olly Buxton

5/5 Blood Sets my Teeth on Edge
  by TastyBabySyndrome ("Daddy Dagon's Daycare" - Proud Sponsor of the Little Tendril Baseball Team, USA)
It took me a while to read the Dexter series of books because I had been a longtime fan of the series and I was afraid of what I might find here. I personally couldn't imagine a different Dexter and i thought there might be a different person described in the book that would ruin something for me. Waiting so long - that really was a mistake. When I sat down with the first Dexter book, I recognized the characters immediately. What's more, I understood some things that I really hadn't taken the time to recognize before. The shirts the detectives/ forensic personages wear, for example, really didn't strike me as odd until I saw the "why" that was described here. I also never thought of the way Maimi cleaned up a crime scene and made it look like something like Dahmerland - by Disney! - until I read the book. Even phrases Dexter mutters in his mind are in both places, completing a character that I have grown to love over the last 4 seasons.
If anything, the book allows a complete picture of Dexter to flourish.

In the show, Dexter has flahses that he shares with the audience and, in the book, he has thoughts that describe his mindset. The two are the same in a lot of ways, only Dexter in the book shows some details that add to the way I see him. Combine that with the show and you have a superb look at a great writer and a great script that allowed Dexter to be born. This book took me a day to read and another to read again for comparison, and I was surprised by how much I had known but that could be pointed out to me. There are bit players in the series I had never known by name, but now that I see them I understand them and the little things that make them unique. Couple that with our Debs and out detective/forensic squads and you have somethint aht is creative, that flows well, and that had a hook that I can only described as addictive.

Since I do not want to ruin the book or the series for people who have not read it, I will say that the descriptions of Dexter are right in some ways but off in others. In places i have seen him described as an emotionless man (he even adds that), but he is far from that. He has complexities that make you like him, a sense of humor that runs dark enough to make you find him interesting, and a past that makes you want to keep learning more. In the series of episodes, I have 4 seasons that are still giving me more, and the books (I'm on the 4th now) also do that. That keep on giving me complex pictures of a man who has a code and a dark passenger riding shotgun with him, and that makes things very interesting. Even the beginning of both sets, the childkiller and how it sets up, both show you the same thing and yet - and yet they give you little pieces of a puzzle that are uniquely their own. This should make this reading a must for fans and nice read for people thinking about getting into the character, because the book provides many latyers along many lines that even make smaller pieces interesting to see as they develop. Decide what you want to see fgirst, however, because one will give away answers to the other and, well, you can't have it both ways.
you simply should try it on in both directions to see how you love the packaging.

I can't say enough about how much I was wrong to wait. Sorry Dexter. I'm glad you don't collect slides just because a person likes to put things off. Also, do not forget the other books that have come out because the on-going era of Dexter is a great thing to watch.
If only I had a bowling shirt like his now, i would feel rather good on this Halloween night.