Review: Double Dexter (Dexter #6) by Jeff Lindsay

Print Length: 330 pages

Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard (October 18, 2011)

From Goodreads.com: A witness. Such a simple concept - and yet for Dexter Morgan, the perfectly well-disguised monster, the possibility of a witness is unthinkable. But when Dexter is on a very private, very satisfying excursion one evening with a wretchedly deserving playmate, the unthinkable happens: someone sees him.

Dexter is not at all pleased. As an upstanding blood-spatter analyst for the Miami Police Department, he has always managed to keep the darker side of his life out of the spotlight...the fun part, where he finds truly bad people - murderers who have escaped the reach of the justice system - and quietly gives them his very special attentions. But now that he's been seen and identified by his witness, Dexter must launch himself into a different kind of hunt.

Making matters worse, a brutal cop killer is targeting Miami's police detectives, leaving behind bodies that are battered beyond recognition...and completely bloodless. As the department grows more fearful of the psychotic killer in their midst, Dexter must handle his own crisis and come to terms with the fact that his witness is not only circling him but determined to expose him. Dexter is being followed, manipulated, and mimicked...leading him to realize that no one likes to have a double, especially when his double's goal is to kill him.

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My Rating: 2 stars out of 5

I'm trying to figure out what on Earth has made these books so popular. I can only assume that people (like myself) remember the television series and were hoping to get reacquainted with our deliciously dark anti-hero. Unfortunately, the Dexter in print is so far removed from the Dexter on the small screen that they could be two separate people entirely. 

Even when television Dexter became a father, he didn't suddenly declare to have become a "real boy" with "real emotions", nor did he lose his common sense and sense of self-preservation. I am seriously amazed that not only is Dexter still alive, but that he hasn't been jailed yet. 

I mean seriously? You have no idea that you have been seen until its too late (and by seen I mean there is a paragraph later on in the book where this witness goes into detail). Then even though you have one small clue to go on, you take your sweet time tracking said witness down? Let's not forget that Dexter seems to have lost every shred of intelligence he ever proclaimed to possess. He becomes a person of interest in a murder investigation and it doesn't dawn on him that the police (and his old buddy Sgt.Doakes in particular) are going to be keeping an extra close eye on him? I am still utterly flabbergasted at how a "brand new" killer can run circles around Dexter for so long without him being any the wiser. It seemed nothing short of insulting to all the things Dexter is supposed to be.

Six books down. And because I got them all at once, two more to go. There is finally a light at the end of this tunnel that has become dull and predictable Dexter. 

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                                  Double Dexter is available from Amazon.com