While Michael C. Hall returns to slash baddies on televisions this month as Dexter Morgan, serial killer-killing serial killer extraordinaire, his character creator Jeff Lindsay has released his fourth book featuring the same title character in “Dexter by Design.”
Following the absolutely terrible 2007 release of “Dexter in the Dark,” Lindsay has managed to take some cliff notes from the Showtime television writers and incorporate their version of Dexter’s world into his newest novel. By incorporating some of the television history of Dexter into his novel, Lindsay has managed to save face and pull Dexter back to being a loveable sociopath.
A quick refresher on “Dexter in the Dark”
This 2007 novel pulled Dexter away from the direction the character had been moving (storylines that revolved around just a little suspension of disbelief) and into the ludicrous. Lindsay portrayed Dexter’s ‘Dark Passenger’ as a spiritual element from ages ago, which could also feel the presence of other similar beings in other humans. Suffice to say, it boiled down to Dexter versus a cult of similar “creature-inhabited” people. The overall effect was one that made me want to stab the book with a knife and put our poor, well-meaning hero out of his misery. If ever there was a book in a series to skip, surely it is “Dexter in the Dark.”
So here we are, back with Dexter after his foray into the terrible world of spiritual monsters that cause killers to exist. “Dexter by Design” does its best to shake off the shit that clings to it from the spiritual dump by starting off with not one, but multiple bodies being found set up around the greater Miami area with dioramas set up within their hollowed out body cavities.
Lindsay definitely gets the book going on the right foot, but he still falls into some of his habits that hold his stories back from being great. Specifically I mean that he forgets nearly all of his sub-plot lines. Secondary characters seem to be thrown haphazardly in to stretch out the page count.
Deborah is taken out early in the novel, but later speaks just long enough to say that she doesn’t think she wants to be an officer anymore and that Dexter is right to go and kill whoever stabbed her. Nothing more is said of her mindset after she tells Dexter to kill whoever tried to finish her off.
Angel Batista is mentioned no more than twice at most, in no real context to the story.
Vince Masuka is there to remind Dexter that he should bring donuts to work, and at one point even asks Dexter where he’s been as crimes have been happening and he hasn’t been doing any actual work. This brings up the point that Dexter up and left for Havana without any notice to his family or work, but we’ll cover that later.
Sergeant Doakes beats his face-time from the last novel by appearing more than once, appearing like a mutilated cyborg with what I imagine to be Stephen Hawking’s voice uttering ‘motherfucker’ as often as possible. Doakes is definitely a prime example of how right the television writers got his character, with great tension between the characters and a spectacular finish in season two. Lindsay’s done nothing with Doakes but make him a lame duck trying to play puppeteer occasionally. My advice is to kill him off in the spectacular manner he so deserves.
I won’t even go into detail on how ridiculous some plot points of the book are, but here are a few briefly:
- Dexter can seemingly leave work at any time, for any length of time and faces no repercussions.
- It’s a bit much to expect the readers to believe not a single person watching the final battle believed that a man being choked, two kids being knocked out, a man being electrocuted and a woman being tied up and nearly sawn in half and thought it was all just a display of art.
- How did Dexter up and leave for Havana with Chutsky and not one person seemed to notice? I’m pretty sure Rita, after freaking out about the kids nearly being kidnapped, would have had something to say about this secret days-long trip her husband was taking.
But I digress.
Finally, I can’t help but find an entertaining bit of irony in the conclusion of the novel, where Dexter seemed so shocked to learn that (again, thanks TV writers!) Rita was preggers with Dexter’s baby. For a guy who is so used to wrapping victims up in garbage bags to avoid future messes, you’d think he would wrap… well, you get my point.
Overall, the book is a nice save after the third installment, and I’m sure when Dexter tastes Delicious (Dex versus Cannibals) comes out I’ll give it a chance. I recommend this book if you’ve read the first two (you can skip the third and not miss a beat.)
