#double dexter

I think this might be the best Dexter book yet!

… if you’ve been following my progression through this series, you’ll know that this is a bit of damnation by faint praise, but seriously. If this was the general quality level of the books so far, I’d be having quite the good time with them.

Dexter Morgan, serial killing vigilante, blood-spatter analyst, and father, is rather enjoying his life. Work and family keep him busy most of the time and whenever things get a bit too stressful, he heads out to indulge in his hobby of chopping up the scum of the earth who escape more conventional justice. There was a problem with his latest outing, however – as he was making his getaway, someone saw him, and now he has to find the witness before his dirty little secret is exposed to everyone. To make matters worse, there’s a killer out there targeting cops and his wife Rita seems upset about something she won’t talk about.

Two of the three main issues that I have with most of the Dexter books – pacing and lack of agency on Dexter’s part – are dealt with quite well here. From fairly early in the story, Dexter is motivated to find his shadow and deal with him, keeping the comfortable status quo unchanged and Dexter unrevealed. A proactive protagonist (even if a somewhat reluctantly proactive one) fixes so many of the problems with this series that I’m shocked that it took Lindsay until book 6 to try it out.

The pacing is also better, oddly by making it slower. We actually have time to get into Dexter’s head, feel the paces of his daily routine, and somehow, this makes me feel more like things are happening. Even though the plot is moving slower, we actually know what our protagonist is thinking, have time for reactions and contemplations, and get moments of characterization that aren’t strictly tied to the current crisis, making me actually feel like I’m witnessing a story about a character instead of a series of scenes. In particular, a subplot involving Dexter taking his step-son camping got some genuine chuckles out of me.

Not that issues don’t remain, of course. This is basically the same plot as the previous books, so while it’s the best iteration of said plot yet, you can still expect Dexter to solve most of his problems via luck rather than brilliance, and for Lindsay to overly rely on everyone around Dexter being stupid or putting the kids in danger in order to push the plot forward. And perhaps most strange of my complaints, the title never quite delivers on the promised “someone is copying Dexter’s crimes” the way I’d hoped it would. But hey, this one was pretty decent overall. If you’ve made it this far into the series, you could do far worse than to keep going. Warnings: In addition to the typical Dexter murder mystery shenanigans, there’s quite a few descriptions of broken bones and crush injuries, as well as some discussion of infidelity and stalking and a few scenes that place children in danger. The villain goes on several misogynistic rants on his blog and one of Dexter’s victims is noted to be a serial child molester.

Double Dexter- Jeff Lindsey

Double Dexter is the sixth novel in the Dexter Series. Synopsis (from amazon) Everyone’s favourite serial killer is back and deadlier than ever… A witness. Such a simple concept – and yet for Dexter Morgan, a perfectly well-disguised serial killer, the possibility of a witness is terrifying. As an upstanding blood-spatter analyst for the Miami Police, Dexter has always managed to keep the darker…