Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay

I had seen the majority of the first book's plot acted out for me over a series of weeks by the lovely folks over at Showtime, and I expected to have a similar feeling about the second installment.

I could not have been more off-base. Whereas I could have definitively said I preferred the show over the books before reading this sophomore effort, I now confess the two mediums are in a dead heat to provide me with the best version of the Dexter character.

For one thing, Lindsay is much more violent and brutal in his descriptions than a television show could ever match. As opposed to other fictional serial-killer narratives, these Dexter stories shine light directly upon the depravity of both the killer's mind and his acts. While Dexter's kills go mostly undescribed, those of his "foil" killers are very horrible and Lindsay doesn't shy away from the gruesome details. The appeal isn't in couching the serial killer in a deeper shroud of sexy mystery, but in throwing the harsh Miami sun right into the depths of his heart.

This idea didn't strike me until I got to the descriptions of Dr. Danco's murders in the second book. I don't want to ruin anything, so I'll just say that a mirror is involved, and that's when I started thinking about reflection, revelation, and self-examination.

Dexter remains an undeniably likable killer, but I still wouldn't want him anywhere near my children. He is obviously deranged, and has a skewed world-view at heart. At one moment, he is saying that he feels at home during the Miami rush hour traffic, because everyone on the road is acting like a homicidal maniac. We can fully identify with him at such moments. At others, though, he is perhaps reading too much into a child's enjoyment of the game "Hangman." When the consequence of Dexter's depravity is a joke, we can all get on board, but when the consequence is either ignoring (or creating) homicidal tendencies in children, his true nature as a threat becomes clear.

I think this is what gives Lindsay's books a power that Ellis wasn't able to with American Psycho. Dexter's search for others "like him" makes it harder to see him as an isolated image we can laugh at and dissect. To find others like you is a genuinely human desire, constantly reminding us that Dexter isn't an isolated archetypal monster the way Bateman is, but that he is a human. It's much scarier to see humanity in monstrosity than the other way around.

Switch Bitch by Roald Dahl

I can't talk about any of these stories without completely ruining them. It's essentially like reading four extended dirty jokes. As with any good dirty joke, they all end with someone being humiliated or harmed or somehow ironically put out.

But, every story is something like forty pages long, and there is good character development. That means that you can't just laugh off the endings like you can with a dirty joke, because you actually grow to like or possibly care about the characters, so their sudden transformation into a punchline can actually hurt you.

A quick read, very fun, especially good for those of you with twisted minds.