Dexter in the Dark (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

Lindsay has managed to do to Dexter what George Lucas did to "The Force" in Phantom Menace: he attempted to "explain" him, and did so using the stupidest, most ridiculous idea possible. Just like the idea of The Force was ruined by "mitochlorians", the Dexter mythos has been utterly wrecked by this book.

Based on everything we've seen in the past two books, Dexter's issues were purely psychological: severe childhood trauma manifested into a disconnect of emotions and an urge to hurt and kill things. That is plausible.

But introducing a supernatural element into this is plain ridiculous. As I read I hoped that Lindsay was simply making Dexter's imagination run a bit wild, but it turns out he wasn't. Turns out our Dearly Disconnected Dexter's Dark Passenger is really the byproduct of some ancient god's magical trickery.

On top of that, the book version of Rita continues to be a screechy, cartoonish character. The TV version of her character along with the children's on-screen portrayals are far, far better than what was written in the books. Thank goodness at least the TV show continues to get better as it goes along.

Avoid this book. It ruins everything you like about Dexter.

Dexter in the Dark, the third book in Jeff Lindsay's series about a serial killer with -- if not a conscience, at least a code -- is quite a departure, and not in a good way. There's a lot of supernatural stuff going on in this one, which was largely absent from the first two novels. I agree with the other reviewer who said Dexter's at his best when he's pitted against a normal world -- Dexter himself is weird enough. We don't need ancient gods piled on.

The business with Dexter's stepchildren following in his footsteps is just ugly, and not especially believable. The vast, vast majority of children who survive childhood trauma do not grow up to become sociopaths; what are the odds that Dexter would find himself stepfather to two who do?

The cardinal sin of this novel, though, is that it was kind of boring. I had to force myself to get through it, and that's not something that's ever happened with a Dexter novel before.

Here's hoping Lindsay drops the supernatural mumbo-jumbo and gets back to basics for his next Dexter book.

Jeff Lindsey was definitely on to something when he invented the serial-killer-gone-vigilante in Darkly Dreaming Dexter, an entertaining if not quite polished twist on both the crime-murder mystery and the serial killer tale. But, he hit his stride with the excellent Dearly Devoted Dexter, a pitch-perfect novel of sarcasm and wit with plenty of blood and character development. It's unfortunate then, that he trips over Dexter in the Dark.

As we re-acquaint ourselves with the witty blood-letter, we find him beaten and bemused. Dexter has lost it, all he's got is homicidal step-kids, a $500 a head wedding caterer, a short-fused sister and a dearly dumb-witted fiancé, but no dark passenger.

Dexter spends the entire book castrated, unable to kill or even understand the homicidal impulse. Worse, he sets about training Astor and Cody to be just like him, a disturbing and overly coincidental plot element. In fact, it seems as if Lindsey wrote the entire novel to explain why damaged kids become lurid psychopaths. It doesn't work.

The plot here is as thin as the paper it's written on. The father of all Dark Passengers wants Dexter, the anomaly of serial killers gone. The feint whiff of the supernatural that we got in the first Dexter book is back in force this time and it's a mood killer. Dexter works best when it's him against a normal world, when the world becomes as twisted as him, it all gets foggy, like a bad LSD hit.

Lindsey also stumbles on his use of, count them, four narrations. We have first persons "It" being the thing that makes people kill, these parts are boring, over written and pointless. Then we have Dexter, thankfully for most of the book. There's also a third person narrating "the watcher" at the end of most, but not all chapters, and finally there is one, count it, one part of one chapter with a flat out third person "Lindsey" narration that is completely off tone with everything else. The book would be an amateur read if it wasn't that Lindsey had already established that he can write.

There little to offer here. Dexter mopes around, fails to figure out the crime, gets captured, barely manages to save the children and ends up married, that's all you get in 300 pages. It's decidedly distracting Dexter. The book is, if nothing else, the funniest of the three novels. Dexter may not kill, but his wit is sharper than ever and his observations keen and biting. The third Dexter book pales behind the second season of the Showtime series they spawned, Dexter on the Television is, for now, better than Dexter in print.

Jeff Lindsay has taken a wrong turn. In the first two books, he got a good start on an enjoyable and satisfying series; a little formulaic, sure, but these are crime novels at heart and there's a long tradition of that so it's hardly anything to apologize for. The strength of the series has never been the writing -- it's cheeky and cute, sure, but starkly unsophisticated and rather repetitive. I roll my eyes every time he tosses the word "sibilant" -- apparently a new vocabulary word he's very excited about -- into a description of the Dark Passenger, sticking out like a sore thumb. I believe I've seen it three or four times, which is enough to be conspicuous in a series that's otherwise written at a grade school reading level. However, all of this is forgivable in the face of a fun, companionable, and of course twisted narrator, as well as a decent job of world-building (though the supporting cast are fleshed out much better in the TV series -- they're a little one-dimensional in the books, by comparison).

What's not forgivable is to take such an abrupt turn on the third book in the series, shifting genres abruptly and in a truly unsatisfying manner. This is no longer a crime novel where we can delight in the cleverness of our dark narrator. No, now it's a lame supernatural thriller. The Dexter we know and love is now whiny, pathetic, and ineffectual. With regard to the main plot, he's practically inert -- he spends most of the time just having stuff happen to him and complaining about how unfair it is, never seizing control of the situation. The wedding subplot runs along similar lines and paints an increasingly unlikeable portrait of our former friend. It simply doesn't ring true to me that the Dexter of the previous two novels, or of the TV show, would be so cowed by his insecure fiance, nerdy co-worker, and pretentious caterer that he couldn't find a way out of paying $500 a plate to have his wedding catered. The interpersonal conflict surrounding that whole situation is mawkish and lame.

Dexter's character has been gutted. The Dark Passenger was a fun metaphor, a way for Dexter to explain to himself (and the reader) the way his darkened mind works. This book offensively undercuts all of that and replaces it with trashy, poorly-considered hocus pocus. It's a truly amateurish, slapdash effort and a tragic turn for a promising series. I hope that Lindsay will recognize from all the negative reviews he's getting that he needs to rescue the series in the next installment (if there is one, which is probably likely only because of the TV show), but given his poor judgement and mediocre writing ability (at least, as displayed in these books), I'm not holding my breath for a miracle.

A very silly, laughably incredible mistake of a book that should never have seen the light of day and that seriously compromises the Dexter series. Let's hope that Dexter IV will be a return to form. It can't be worse.

It's hard for me to so harshly review a Dexter novel considering how much I loved the two previous installments, but this novel veered so far off the track laid by the other two that it came off sounding more like a cast-off script of 'Ghostbusters'.

Lindsay made an unfortunate decision this time around in seeking to explain the origin of the Dark Passenger, and in doing so introduces bizarre and awkward supernatural elements to an otherwise reality-based (...okay, MORE OR LESS reality-based) series. The fun of Dexter and his Dark Passenger is that it has previously been left up to reader interpretation - another dark nuance of Dexter's already questionable psyche. But now...Ancient Gods...seriously? And a biblical cult...REALLY??

I also had a problem with the side characters in this story. Deborah has become a mere caricature - a tool used to drag Dexter into the book's main murder mystery (for otherwise, he'd have no excuse for being present on consistently bloodless crime scenes). We're told by Dexter that Deborah is a "good cop", yet we're given no proof of this as no actual police progress is ever made in the case. An inexplicably bad attitude and a persistent case of tourettes does NOT a good detective make.

And the Cody/Astor storyline of fledgling serial killers is painfully contrived. As if the excuse of a bad childhood holds any weight when compared with Dexter's own traumatic past; I can understand the circumstances that molded Dexter, but with Astor and Cody I just want to give them a good slap and send them back to the playground. If every kid in America who suffered from a shoddy father figure ended up with their own Dark Passenger...we'd run out of victims pretty quickly.

And the conclusion...um, what conclusion? The "mystery" at the heart of this book doesn't even allow readers a chance to unravel it alongside Dexter, as there proves to be no mystery to solve. What answers we are given are delivered via a very bizarre and uncomfortable dance sequence (yes, DANCE SEQUENCE) that leads an oblivious Dexter right into the midst of the grand finale. So much for clues and detective skills!

There is really no satisfactory way to wrap this up except to say that I love Dexter, I love the first two books, and I...err...hope I like the fourth book?

I enjoyed the first book greatly, the second a little less, this one not at all. Where to start? The contrived "Evil Being" that chases him and the hasty resolution to the chase? His sister and fiance being reduced to cardboard cut-out characters? Or the worst part for me: the two kids, Cody and Astor, being accepted by him as future serial killers, whom he will mold in his own image. Did anyone think it was cute or funny when they had the neighbor's cat tied up and ready for disembowelment? Um, Dexter, maybe you could try a little therapy for them first before teaching them to kill safely? In all, an ugly and clumsy story only slightly redeemed by Dexter's sarcastic humor and a few good action scenes.

The first two books in this series were incredibly fresh and enjoyable, and I could barely stand the wait for this one. Unfortunately, it is a major disappointment. This third novel in the series veers off sharply into the realm of either the supernatural or science fiction, making Dexter's "Dark Passenger" a separate entity rather than a twisted part of his own mind. Dexter's two soon-to-be-stepchildren have become killing-lust crazed urchins slavering for their first kill at the ripe old ages of 6 and 10 years old, and his old nemesis Sergeant Doakes makes a cameo appearance with artificial limbs and moaning menacingly at Dexter...while contributing absolutely nothing to the story.

The trademark humor is as good as ever, but it's not enough to compensate for the utterly bizarre and contrived plot. I wish Mr. Lindsay had followed in the footsteps of other serial novelists (pun intended) like John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee and Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels, staying with a good, satisfying formula for his fascinating character. For whatever reason, he drastically changed it and the resulting novel is, in my opinion, not worth reading. If you must, wait until it hits the bargain bin.

I loved the first book in the serious and eagerly bought and devoured the second book and more recently Dexter in the Dark.

This third book in the serious is very different than the first two. It evolved in a way that took Dexter from being the character you didn't expect to love, and took the charm and inexplicable draw to him out of the story. The supernatural focus was bizarre and boring. The characters around him didn't develop any further - except for the step children and their direction was sad.

If you love the television series, you'll probably enjoy the first book, be ok with the second book, and end the third book thinking "what the heck was that?". In this case I think TV is going in a better direction than the books.

There's a tradition in mystery stories to avoid the supernatural as a plot element, unless the specific rules of the supernatural phenomenon have been laid out in advance for the reader. This is partly a consequence of the "fair play" rule, and partly an outgrowth of the rationalistic tradition of mysteries. Even when things appear to be supernatural, usually they're not. The canonical example is "The Hound of the Baskervilles", in which phenomena that appear to be paranormal turn out to have a rational explanation.

This novel breaks that rule, and stumbles badly in doing so. There may be hints of supernatural beliefs in the first novel, but they can be easily dismissed as Dexter's attempts to come to grips with his bizarre nature, and they don't affect the plot too much. The second novel was utterly devoid of such elements. In this third installment, the reader is expected to swallow whole the literal existence of Moloch, the reality of demonic possession, and the idea that psychopaths can see one another's "dark shadows". All of this is done in the service of a plot where Dexter is helpless throughout, and only stumbles into a resolution as a consequence of inexplicable incompetence on the part of the bad guys and a sudden and unexplained breaking of the dubious rules of the narrative.

Worst of all, Dexter spends almost all of the book whining about the loss of his Dark Passenger, and apparently all of the verbal wit and sarcasm that made his narration such a pleasure to read in previous novels. Before, the reader was invited to share a grim chuckle with Dexter at the venal stupidity of life. Now, I just want to soak a leather glove in water and slap him with it.

Lindsay is probably out of viable ideas, and may have had no real notion of what made his character work in the first place. It wouldn't be the first time a bad author stumbled into a winning formula. I hope this isn't true, but if it is, the first two Dexter novels may be the only worthwhile ones we'll ever see.