Bokrecension: Darkly Dreaming Dexter av Jeff Lindsay

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Introduction
This review is about the thriller Darkly Dreaming Dexter written by Jeff Lindsay. Jeff Lindsay is the pen name of the American author Jeffry P. Freundlich, who lives in south Florida with his wife, Hilary Hemingway (Ernest Hemingway’s niece).
The novel is about the seemingly normal blood splatter analyst Dexter Morgan, who leads a normal life; he says all the right things, and rarely draws attention to himself. However, Dexter has a secret hobby. He’s an accomplished serial killer. Even though he’s killed dozens of people he has never been caught, because he knows exactly how to dispose of the evidence. There are people who would rather he wasn’t caught at all. Adopted at the age of three after a tragedy left him orphaned, Dexter''''s learned; with help from his policeman father, to channel his "gift", killing only the bad guys, the ones that “slipped through the system”.
At the request of his stepsister, Deborah, a Miami cop, Dexter helps the police pursue a serial killer who has been attacking prostitutes in Miami. The killer, whose work is precise, clean and neat not unlike Dexter’s own, seems to do more than just copying Dexter, he seems to be saying, "Come out and play”. Dexter doesn’t know whether he wants the killer to get caught or not, the killer can do what Dexter can’t allow himself to do. Exited by his new friend, Dexter gets careless and incautious and is nearly caught while committing a murder. He starts having strange dreams almost like premonitions of the killings. At one point he actually thinks he is the killer. Even his sister starts suspecting him. In the end the real murderer turns out to be more familiar than Dexter even could imagine.

Setting
The story takes place in the twenty-first century Miami, Florida. Every event in the story takes place in Miami and the surrounding area. There are little if any descriptions in the book of the settings.

Characters
Dexter Morgan is in his thirties. He’s handsome and polite, very discreet. There are a lot of things in life he doesn’t understand for example why you have to smile in photographs, so he fakes it, he smiles. He says most people fake some human interaction, he just fakes them all.
People are less important than lawn furniture to him and he would care if every human in the universe suddenly expired, with one possible exception of himself and maybe Deborah. But he likes kids.
Dexter’s mind there are three different voices: his own, his step-father and “the dark passenger” which could be described as Dexter’s need to kill which in his head battles his step-fathers somewhat conscience-like voice. “The dark passenger” is what drives him to kill and he kills only to satisfy it.
Deborah is Dexter’s younger sister. She’s tall and has short brown hair. She works undercover for the Miami police as a prostitute. She’s trying to get out of her undercover work because she wants be a real detective.

Message
I don’t believe that the story has particular message. It gives you a different insight to the life of a serial killer. It makes you question if what his doing is right or wrong. Because he is only killing the bad guys, it seems right. Though he puts himself in the role of the juror, prosecutor and executioner, who is he to decide really? Even though the legal system might not be working as well as you might wish, it’s seems very immoral to violate it. A well working legal system is one of the things that separate a dictatorship from a democracy.
A huge question in this novel for me is if what he’s stepfather did was right. I mean he literally made he’s son into a serial killer. Dexter just happened to turn out decent; he might as well have been an “unstoppable killing machine”. Is it possible that it had been better to give his son some kind of psychiatric treatment? I think most parents just would have ignored it. So in that sense I think his father did the right thing.
The story is also about secrets and hiding parts of who you are to fit in: the white lies we tell to make other people feel better. I can’t help but feel like Dexter does sometimes and I think all of us fake a lot of human interactions without thinking about it, just by reflex.

Conclusions
I like this novel very much. It’s thrilling, exiting, and very well written and it brings up a lot of interesting questions. It’s not your usual crime novel. You don’t know who the killer is until the very end and Dexter even suspects himself of being the murderer. You can’t help liking Dexter even though at first he’s very unlikeable.
I like that it’s written from Dexter’s point of view, you’re in his head and see things as he does. The downside to this is that the minor characters get little space. It all revolves around him and you don’t get the full picture. But you get to know Dexter as he really is and through him you e...