My Review of DARKLY DREAMING DEXTER by Jeff Lindsay

This is the book that the TV show is based on. I will first say that I love the Showtime show. When I told people what Red Island was about they always told me I should watch Dexter. The show stars Michael C. Hall, who I enjoyed in Six Feet Under, as Dexter Morgan the seemingly normal blood splatter analysis for the Miami Homicide Unit who has the unique hobby of killing serial killers, hacking them into pieces, and dumping them in the ocean.

Mental Note: One reason never to go to Miami is that there are enough serial killers to keep Dexter busy.

Smeagul and Gollum

I wanted to read the Dexter books, but now I wish I hadn't. The first season of the show very closely follows Darkly Dreaming Dexter. There are differences of course. In the book Dexter seems more brutal and he often goes off thinking and talking to himself in a way that resembles the Smeagol/Gollum split personality in the Two Towers movie. On the TV show Dexter still has his Dark Passenger hungry for the kill, but instead of speaking with his dark side he talks to the ghost of his foster father who doubles as his conscience. In the book it is Detective LaGuerta who has the hot’s for Dexter. In the TV show you see a glimpse of her attraction to him in the first episode of season one, but then that's it. And she's a lieutenant. The worst character change for me is that Det. Angel Batista is a medical examiner in the book and never really built as a character.

There are quite a few times through-out the book that Dexter goes off with a whole lot of thinking and not much going on.  Then for me the ending left me a bit deflated.  So much had to happen in the last 10 pages that descriptions falter and little seems resolved.

From what I am told the other books in the series do not go along with the TV show so I am hoping to read more and get into it.

I’m confused about what to rate this novel.  I believe I did not really like it because of the TV show.  If you love the show I would not recommend the book and if you haven’t, I would.

I’ll go with 3.5 stars out of 5

 

As far as TV shows that are from books I rank them as follows:

#1

Kathy Reichs Temperance Brennan Novels / TV show Bones

Reason:  Except for the name of the main character all the other characters I have read are different from the show.  The books also take a different story line so that you can read the books and watch the show without confusion.  I also like how the show plays more with Kathy Reichs using her name as the main character in books written by TV Temperance

#2

Tess Gerritsen’s Rizzoli & Isles series / TV show Rizzoli & Isles

Reasons:  The show uses a lot of the book names, though they are just about all different from their book counterparts.  The man thing I don’t like about the TV show is how far it pushes realism, but it is for entertainment and I would never complain about watching Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander who play the main characters.

#3

Dexter

I’d rather watch the TV show…Okay, I am actually watching it right now as I write this.