Dexter By Design

The author certainly lost his way with the 3rd novel and has tried to revert to a storyline more in line with the first two novels. While I was pleased to see Dexter ‘return to the real world' in a sense, this instalment of the Dexter series again left me slightly underwhelmed. The first two novels while not being master pieces built a solid foundation to create a great series. The third novel aside (lets forget that happened) I feel like there has been no real developments in terms of characters or story arc. I guess my expectations were slightly too high as I have recently watched Dexter season 4 which took Dexter to a whole new level and had an incredible story line. I shall endeavour to read the latest instalment of the series but I fear it may be my last if it continues the current trend of a weak story.

The 4th book in the Dexter Morgan series and certain things are starting to become old such as the fact that every nemesis that Dexter comes to face that might be able to expose him gets so nightly tied up by being killed off. It's starting to become cliche when 4 books in I can predict how the story is going to go. Granted, I know series are tough because it's hard to present essentially the same information in a new & exciting way. The thing is Lindsay brought enough things to the table to actually branch out from the cut & dry formula of Dexter has foe, foe gets the upper half for about 100 pages, Dexter prevails in the end and anyone that was opposing him is killed off or rendered quiet (ahem, Sgt. Doakes?). Now he has two “monsters-in-training,” a wife, his sister is in crisis, and he knows some more information about his dark passenger. Why weren't any of these things explored in this book? Instead I get a plot line that feels like a 300 page filler episode!

This book gets a 3 because overall the novel is decent. And after all, maybe I'm asking too much of Lindsey to actually develop Dexter's life a little more besides throwing at him every bump in the road on the Life game w/o any exposition. Lindsey's dialogue is still spot on, Dexter's inner monologue can still make me laugh out loud. I just expected too much from the book and it fell significantly short.