Review: Dexter Is Dead (Dexter #8) by Jeff Lindsay

Print Length: 304 pages

Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard (July 7, 2015)

From Goodreads.com: Dexter Morgan has burned the candle at both ends for many years. Blood spatter analyst . . . husband . . . father . . . serial killer. And now, for the first time, his world has truly collapsed. Dexter is arrested on charges of murder. He has lost everything—including his wife, his kids, and the loyalty of his sister. Now completely alone, Dexter faces a murder charge (for a crime . . . ironically . . . he did not actually commit). His only chance for freedom lies with his brother, Brian, who has a dark plan to prove Dexter's innocence. But the stakes are deadly, and the epic showdown that lies in Dexter's path may lead, once and for all, to his demise. 

                                                 *******************

My Rating: 1 star out of 5

You know it's pretty bad when you get excited to finish a story simply because you know it's the last one. No more dull and disappointing Dexter. No more, wondering to yourself, just how in the hell a television show managed to be BETTER than the books it was supposedly based on. 

To say I hated how Dexter the television show ended is quite an understatement. But I LOATHED this entire book. 

Let's begin with the bumbling Detective Anderson. There is no way that his superiors (up to and including the State Attorney) would have allowed what he did. The fact that he even managed to make detective considering he couldn't find a killer if the killer confessed non withstanding, he doctored evidence. He made stuff up. Sure, bad cops do exist, but when a good one brings PROOF to his superiors? It would not have been swept under the rug the way it was in this book. 

And okay, so Dexter is in jail. Where admittedly, he belongs, but not for the reasons he has found himself incarcerated. But considering his innocence, when he gets out we are going to get to see a new Dexter right? One who has to deal with the aftermath of not only his girlfriend dying and thus crushing his hope of a "way out of the tedium of his life", but then his wife had to go and die as well. Leaving him with one biological child and two step-children, who for reasons known only to the author, have dark passengers of their own. That would have been interesting.

But nope. Deborah insists he sign his rights over to her (which he happily does after spending how many books fighting for what he calls his kids)? And then they disappear. Until the ending when they are ONCE AGAIN kidnapped. Only this time, between the pair of them, they can't put their dark passengers together to find a way not only out of the predicament but to save their sister and cousin as well. 

Nope. That honor falls to is he even trying to think Dexter, his fake as hell brother Brian (and really you want me to believe someone who had been that heavily involved with a drug lords operations didn't know Dexter's own lawyer was involved? He just hires him)? And of course, the I hate you and everything about you adopted sister Deborah. But of course, you know, her son is involved as well, so she must act too. Even though she's spent the entire novel not only disowning poor innocent this time Dexter, but making it a point not to speak to him. Honestly? I can see why he debated letting the kids die. 

At least my disappointing journey with Dexter has come to an end. I mean I think he died? It kind of seemed like he did, but the story ended somewhat abruptly without even an epilogue to show us how the children ended up having Dexter die while saving them. Then again, I suppose I should be thankful it ended the way that it did before the author had a chance to run Astor and Cody even more than he already had. Or heaven forbid give Lily Anne and Nicholas their own dark passengers. 

                                                         *******************

                                  Dexter is Dead is available from Amazon.com