Book #27: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Title: Darkly Dreaming Dexter
Author: Jeff Lindsay

I am a huge fan of Dexter on Showtime. My sister-in-law and her husband got us hooked on it about a year and a half ago, and Eddie and I spent way too much time last winter getting caught up on the first four seasons. So when Audible had a sale on Darkly Dreaming Dexter, I was curious to see how this first book in the Dexter series was similar or different from the television show.

I hadn't anticipated how much of the novel would take place in Dexter's head. Although Dexter Morgan is obviously the main character in the show and we do get glimpses (through voice-overs) of Dexter's thoughts from time to time, the show is, by nature less in Dexter's head than the novel. As a result, we get characters like Dexter's adoptive father Harry, who appears frequently in the show as the good angel sitting on his shoulder. Harry and Dexter talk on the show to reveal the same kinds of inner conversations that take place in Dexter's head in the book.

The ending of Darkly Dreaming Dexter comes more out of left field than the ending of Dexter (although they are, by most accounts) the same ending. On the television show, there's a whole story of Deb's romance with an orthopedic surgeon specializing in artificial limbs, and another whole story of Dexter trying to put together what his life was like before he was adopted by the Morgan family and became a serial killer himself, and both stories appear only tangentially related to the main story of a serial killer who cuts women's limbs from their bodies with surgical precision (when I say it that way, it seems sort of obvious doesn't it?). Anyway, I felt like we were led to the conclusion more clearly in the television show. And Dexter was a little less creepy in the concluding scenes in the television show as well.

Also, I guess I should have intuited this from the opening of the show, where Dexter wakes up, gets dressed, and makes breakfast, all in eye-popping detail, but there's a huge focus on food in the books. We learn all about who makes the best Cuban sandwiches in Miami and the relative benefits of crullers and apple fritters. I know the story takes place in a police station, but there seems to be a lot of discussion about donuts. And while the Miami setting is integral to the show, I also saw Darkly Dreaming Dexter as sort of a love letter to a city. My brother-in-law and his family live in Miami, and when we visit I'm eager to to a Sopranos-esque tour of Miami, Dexter style.