Darkly Dreaming Dexter by
Jeff Lindsay
pbk out May 05
(Orion)
at £6.99
A strangely attractive book - certainly strange! Beautifully written, witty
and amusing, it is also horrible in that it is written in the first person by
someone who purports to be a serial killer, cruelly vivisecting his victims.
This Dexter Morgan is a cheerful, polite and attractive young man who
works as a forensic nerd in Miami's police laboratory, specialising in blood
spatter analysis. He was the foster son of a cop and his half sister Deborah is
also on the force, but cheesed off because she has been put on the Vice
Squad, masquerading as a hooker, when she is desperate to become a
detective. She pesters Dexter to help her come to the notice of the Homicide
branch, especially when a rival serial vivisector appears, knocking off
prostitutes. Dexter only kills those whom he knows are evil themselves and
he is flummoxed to find competition on the block, especially when he begins
to wonder if the other guy is actually, himself, killing during his 'sleep'.
The story gets even more weird, when Dexter's 'inner voice' begins talking
to the other 'inner voice' and the plot almost developes into a
schizophrenics' convention. The end is a bit of a let-down in that it comes
perilously near a cheat - and one which has whiskers on it, having been used
so often by crime-writers.
An interesting read, which is funny as well as bizarre - one cannot escape
the conclusion that the author must be almost as strange a fellow as the ones
he writes about, to think up a yarn like this.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
Darkly Dreaming Dexter by
Jeff Lindsay
