Dearly Devoted Dexter

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In this acclaimed follow-up to the bestselling novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter , we pick up with Dexter Morgan when he’s under considerable pressure. It’s not easy being an ethical serial killer—but he’s doing his best to keep up the disguise, spending time with his girlfriend and her kids, slowly becoming the world’s first serial killer couch potato. Then a particularly nasty psychopath starts cutting a trail through Miami and killer whose twisted techniques leave even Dexter speechless. When his sister Deborah, a tough-as-nails cop, is drawn into the case, it becomes clear that Dexter will have to do something about it. Unless, of course, the killer finds him first . . . From Publishers Weekly Dexter the Demon, Dexter the Avenger—whatever he chooses to call himself, the hero of this intelligent, darkly humorous series knows he's a monster who loves slicing people into little pieces. That Dexter limits his killing to "acceptable" victims—usually other serial killers—is designed to keep the reader from having to worry too much about the morality of his avocation. Dexter's just added his 40th victim, a homicidal pedophile, and is eagerly looking ahead to number 41 when he becomes involved in a case through his job as a blood spatter analyst at the Miami-Dade police forensics lab. A man is found with "everything on [his] body cut off, absolutely everything"—a piece of work that makes Dexter's own tidy killings look like child's play. This madman, nicknamed Danco, spends weeks surgically removing his victims' ears, lips, nose, arms, legs, etc., while keeping them alive to watch their own mutilation. Despite a certain professional admiration for Danco's dexterity, Dexter decides to take on the case. It's the contradictions in Dexter's character that make it all work—he's smart, he's funny, he cares for children, and yet he has no normal human responses or emotions. The first book in the series, Darkly Dreaming Dexter , was very well received; this one should be as well, and deservedly so. (July 19) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Starred Review Dexter, your friendly neighborhood serial killer, is a police department blood-spatter expert who, in his spare time, kills people. Not just anyone, you understand--he only kills other killers, people whom he believes deserve it. Is this because Dexter really has a heart of gold? No, he's a monster (he is the first to admit it), but at least he tries to steer his evil into productive channels. In the second of Lindsay's alliteratively titled thrillers (following last year's Darkly Dreaming Dexter ), Dexter's nemesis, Sergeant Doakes, is getting a little too close for comfort, and there is also the matter of a psychopath on the loose. When Dexter's two problems eventually link up . . . well, what's a well-meaning homicidal maniac to do? Dexter, the cheerfully sociopathic crime fighter, is one of mystery fiction's most original, compelling, and oddly endearing heroes. Lindsay digs a little deeper under Dexter's surface this time, showing us a little more about what makes him tick, but readers shouldn't worry. There are volumes still to be written about this gruesomely fascinating character. David Pitt Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved