Amazon.com Review
Book Description
The macabre, witty New York Times bestselling series (and inspiration for the #1 Showtime series, Dexter) continues as our darkly lovable killer matches wits with a sadistic artiste--who is creating bizarre murder tableaux of his own all over Miami.
After his surprisingly glorious honeymoon in Paris, life is almost normal for Dexter Morgan. Married life seems to agree with him: he’s devoted to his bride, his stomach is full, and his homicidal hobbies are nicely under control. But old habits die hard--and Dexter’s work as a blood spatter analyst never fails to offer new temptations that appeal to his offbeat sense of justice...and his Dark Passenger still waits to hunt with him in the moonlight.
The discovery of a corpse (artfully displayed as a sunbather relaxing on a Miami beach chair) naturally piques Dexter’s curiosity and Miami’s finest realize they’ve got a terrifying new serial killer on the loose. And Dexter, of course, is back in business.
An Essay by Jeff Lindsay: "Dexter and Me"
My mother called me one night two years ago. "Well," she said. "Now I know you’ve really made it."
"Oh, really?" I said. "What do you mean?"
"I’m watching Jeopardy," she said. "The answer to the last question was, ‘Who is Dexter?’"
A few nights later, my sister called. "You were just on Nancy Grace," she said.
"I was?" I said, very surprised. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing I would forget. "You mean me?"
"No, not you," she snorted, as if I should have known better that someone like me would never be on Nancy Grace. "Dexter. Somebody’s foot washed up on a beach, and she called it a real-life Dexter moment."
And then a few weeks later my agent called. "Did you hear what they named the new robot arm for the space shuttle?" he said.
"Let me guess," I said.
"It’s iconic," my agent said. "That’s a good thing."
And it is. Dexter is iconic. But as my sister was smart enough to pick up on, I am not. I think this is a good thing. I worked in Hollywood for a dozen years, and all I can say about it is that the primitive tribes who think the camera steals your soul were really on to something. So I don’t want to be instantly recognizable--not Tom Cruise famous, not even Stephen King famous.
On the other hand, if Dexter wants fame, that’s fine with me. He deserves it: he’s a fine, upstanding, hardworking guy who is good with kids, thoughtful to co-workers, and helpful around the house. And if he slips away now and then for a little bit of human vivisection--well, nobody’s perfect.
I will admit, though, that lately I’ve begun to suffer what may be the world’s first Edgar Rice Burroughs Complex. Like Burroughs’s Tarzan, my character is known all over the world, and I am still anonymous. That takes some getting used to, even though there are perks. It has given me some wonderful moments--like riding into Times Square in a taxi and seeing Dexter 60 feet tall on the side of the building. "Have you seen that program?" the driver asked me.
"I don’t watch much TV," I said, even though I was staring like a school boy at a peep show.
"There are books, too," he said.
And there are. I hope you will like them. They make wonderful gifts, too. Even better, Nancy Grace and Alex Trebek will never have to see me sweat.--Jeff Lindsay
(Photo © Hilary Hemingway)
From Publishers Weekly
Lindsay doesn't always maintain the balance between farce and something more serious in his fourth thriller to feature Dexter Morgan (after Dexter in the Dark). As fans of the hit Showtime TV series know, Dexter is a blood-splatter analyst for the Miami PD as well as a serial killer who targets killers who've evaded justice. When two eviscerated corpses turn up on a beach, Dexter investigates, as does his sister, Deborah, a sergeant with his department, who suffers serious injury after she's stabbed by a suspect, Alex Doncevic. Convinced Deborah's assailant is the person also responsible for the bodies on the beach, Dexter eliminates Doncevic, only to find that he's taken an innocent life. To Dexter's further dismay, someone begins posting videos of Doncevic's murder on YouTube. While the darkly witty Lindsay deserves credit for continuing to make imaginative use of his original concept, a contrived resolution disappoints. (Sept.)
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Review
"Hilarious black humor." —USA TODAY
"Maybe the first serial killer who unabashedly solicits our love." —Entertainment Weekly
Raves for Jeff Lindsay's Dexter by Design
“The best of Dexter’s four adventures to date, the trademark mixture of amusement and horror complemented by a genuinely suspenseful plot.” —Kirkus (starred review)
“Dexter is a brilliant creation, a monster who walks like a man, a homicidal maniac who only kills people who deserve it, a simulacrum of a human being who has had to learn how to fake his way through the intricacies of human interaction. There is a popular television series about the character, but a TV show can’t capture the nuances of Lindsay’s writing, the subtleties of Dexter’s delightfully deranged mind…Like a lightly comic version of Hannibal Lecter, Dexter is a genuinely memorable, disturbingly compelling antihero.” —Booklist
About the Author
JEFF LINDSAY is the New York Times bestselling author of Darkly Dreaming Dexter, Dearly Devoted Dexter, and Dexter in the Dark. His novels are the basis of the hit Showtime and CBS series, Dexter. He lives in South Florida with his family.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
ONE
Pardonnez-moi, monsieur. Oe est la lune? Alors, mon ancien, la lune est ici, ouvre la Seine, enorme, rouge, et humide. Merci, mon ami, I see it now. Et actualment, name of a dog, it is a night for the moon, a night made just for the sharp pleasures of the moonlight, the dance macabre between Dexter of the Dark and some special friend.
But merde alors! The moon is over la Seine? Dexter is in Paris! Quelle tragedie! The Dance is not possible, not in Paris! Here there is no way to find the special friend, no sheltering Miami night, no gentle welcoming ocean waters for the leftovers. Here there is only the taxis, the tourists, and that huge and lonely moon.
And Rita, of course. Rita everywhere, fumbling with her phrase book and folding and unfolding dozens of maps and guidebooks and pamphlets, all promising perfect happiness and, miraculously, delivering it--to her. Only to her. Because her newly wedded Parisian bliss is strictly a solo act, and her newly acquired husband, former high priest of lunar levity, Dexter the Drastically Deferred, can only marvel at the moon and hold tightly to the impatiently twitching Dark Passenger and hope that all this happy insanity will end soon and send us back to the well-ordered normal life of catching and carving the other monsters.
For Dexter is used to carving freely, with a neat and happy hand that now must merely clutch at Rita's while he marvels at the moon, savoring the irony of being on a Honeymoon, wherein all that is sweet and lunar is forbidden.
And so, Paris. Dexter trudges meekly along in the wake of the Good Ship Rita, staring and nodding where these things are required and occasionally offering a sharp and witty comment, like, "Wow," and "Uh-huh," as Rita trammels through the pent-up lust for Paris that has surged in her all these many years and now, at last, has found consummation.
But surely even Dexter is not immune to the legendary charms of the City of Light? Surely even he must behold the glory and feel some small synthetic twitch stirring in response, somewhere in the dark and empty pit where a soul should go? Can Dexter truly come to Paris and feel absolutely nothing?
Of course not. Dexter feels plenty; Dexter feels tired, and bored. And Dexter feels slightly anxious to find someone to play with sometime soon. The sooner the better, to be perfectly honest, since for some reason Being Married seems to sharpen the appetites somewhat.
But this is all part of the bargain, all part of what Dexter must do in order to do what Dexter does. In Paris, just like at home, Dexter must maintenez le disguisement. Even the worldly-wise French might pause and frown at the thought of a monster in their midst, an inhuman fiend who lives only to tumble the other monsters off the edge and into well-earned death. And Rita, in her new incarnation as blushing bride, is the perfect disguisement for all I truly am. No one could possibly imagine that a cold and empty killer would stumble meekly along behind such a perfect avatar of American tourism. Surely, not, mon frere. C'est impossible.
For the moment, alas, tres impossible. There is no hope of slipping quietly away for a few hours of much-deserved recreation. Not here, where Dexter is not known and does not know the ways of the police. Never in a strange and foreign place, where the strict rules of the Harry Code do not apply. Harry was a Miami cop, and in Miami all that he spake was just as he ordained it to be. But Harry spake no French, and so the risk is far too high here, no matter how strongly the pulse of darkness may throb in the shadowy backseat.
A shame, really, because the streets of Paris are made for lurking with sinister intent. They are narrow, dark, and possess no logical order that a reasonable person can detect. It's far too easy to imagine Dexter, wrapped in a cape and clutching a gleaming blade, sliding through these shadowed alleys with an urgent appointment somewhere nearby in one of these same old buildings that seem to lean down at you and demand that you misbehave.
And the streets themselves are so perfect for mayhem, made as they are out of large blocks of stone that, in Miami, would long ago have been pried out and flung through the windshield of passing cars, or sold to a building contractor to make new roads.
But this is not Miami, alas. This is Paris. And so I bide my time, solidifying this vital new phase of Dexter's disguise, hoping to live through only one week more of Rita's dream honeymoon. I drink the French coffee--weak by Miami standards--and the vin de table--disturbingly, reminiscently, red as blood--and marvel at my new wife's capacity for soaking up all that is French. She has learned to blush very nicely as she says table pour deux, s'il vous pla"t, and the French waiters instantly understand that this is a brand-new two and, almost as if they all got together ahead of time and agreed to feed Rita's romantic fantasies, they smile fondly, bow us to a table, and all but break into a chorus of "La Vie en rose."
Ah, Paris. Ah, l'amour.
We spend the days trudging through the streets and stopping at terribly important map references. We spend the nights in small and quaint eating spots, many of them with the added bonus of some form of French music playing. We even attend a performance of The Imaginary Invalid at the Comedie Franeaise. It is performed entirely in French for some reason, but Rita seems to enjoy it.
Two nights later she seems to enjoy the show at the Moulin Rouge just as much. She seems, in fact, to enjoy nearly everything about Paris, even riding a boat up and down the river. I do not point out to her that much nicer boat rides are available at home in Miami, boat rides that she has never shown any interest in, but I do begin to wonder what, if anything, she might be thinking.
She assaults every landmark in the city, with Dexter as her unwilling shock troop, and nothing can stand before her. The Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, Sacre-Coeur, the cathedral of Notre-Dame; they all fall to her fierce blond focus and savage guidebook.
It begins to seem like a somewhat high price to pay for disguisement, but Dexter is the perfect soldier. He plods on under his heavy burden of duty and water bottles. He does not complain about the heat, his sore feet, the large and unlovely crowds in their too-tight shorts, souvenir T-shirts, and flip-flops.
He does, however, make one small attempt to stay interested. During the Hop-on-Hop-off Bus Tour of Paris, as the taped program drones out the names of the different fascinating locations with massive historical significance in eight languages, a thought comes unasked for into Dexter's slowly suffocating brain. It seems only fair that here in the City of Eternal Accordion Music there is some small cultural pilgrimage available to a long-suffering monster, and I know now what it is. At the next stop, I pause at the door of the bus and ask the driver a simple and innocent question.
"Excuse me," I say. "Do we go anywhere near the Rue Morgue?"
The driver is listening to an iPod. He pulls one earbud out with an annoyed flourish, looks me over from head to toe, and raises an eyebrow.
"The Rue Morgue," I say again. "Do we go by the Rue Morgue?"
I find myself speaking in the too-loud tones of the American nonlinguist, and I stumble to a stop. The driver stares at me. I can hear tinny hip-hop music coming from the dangling earbud. Then he shrugs. He launches into a brief and passionate explanation of my complete ignorance in very rapid French, pops the earbud back in, and opens the door to the bus.
I follow Rita off the bus, meek, humble, and mildly disappointed. It had seemed like such a simple thing to make a solemn stop at the Rue Morgue, to pay my respects to an important cultural landmark in the world of Monsters, but it is not to be. I repeat the question later, to a taxi driver, and receive the same answer, and Rita interprets with a somewhat embarrassed smile.
"Dexter," she says. "Your pronunciation is terrible."
"I might do better in Spanish," I say.
"It wouldn't matter," she says. "There is no Rue Morgue."
"What?"
"It's imaginary," she says. "Edgar Allan Poe made it up. There is no real Rue Morgue."
I feel like she has just said there is no Santa Claus. No Rue Morgue? No happy historical pile of Parisian corpses? How can this be? But it is certain to be true. There is no questioning Rita's knowledge of Paris. She has spent too many years with too many guidebooks for any possibility of a mistake.
And so I slide back into my shell of dumb compliance, the tiny flicker of interest killed as dead as Dexter's conscience.
With only three days left before we fly back home to the blessed malice and mayhem of Miami, we come to our Full Day at the Louvre. This is something that has raised mild interest even in me; after all, merely because I have no soul does not mean I don't appreciate art. Quite the opposite, in fact. Art is, after all, all about making patterns in order to create a meaningful impact on the senses. And isn't this just exactly what Dexter does? Of course, in my case "impact" is a little more literal, but still--I can appreciate other media.
So it was with at least a mild interest that I followed Rita across the huge courtyard of the Louvre and down the stairs into the glass pyramid. She had chosen to go this alone and forsake the tour groups--not out of any distaste for the grungy mobs of gaping, drooling, woefully ignorant sheep who seemed to coalesce around each tour guide, but because Rita was determined to prove that she was a match for any museum, even a French one.
She marched us right up to the ticket line, where we waited for several minutes before she finally bought our tickets, and then we were off into the wonders of the Louvre.
The first wonder was immediately obvious as we climbed out of the admissions area and into the actual museum. In one of the first galleries we came to, a huge crowd of perhaps five large tour grou...
