Thursday, July 12, 2012

Listened: "Dexter is Delicious" by Jeff Lindsay

Listened: Dexter is Delicious by Jeff Lindsay, 2010, OverDrive download.  Narrated by Lindsay who did a fairly decent job.

Still a fun series and Dexter continues to change as the series moves along.  Dexter is still the loveable serial killer.  As always, spoilers await.

Dexter has a newborn daughter.  The daughter's recent birth has caused Dexter to develop feelings.  Dexter has no experience with feelings and is learning to cope with tension, happiness, sadness, and anxiety.  Dexter's insane, killer brother shows up making nice.

Dexter helps at a possible kidnapping scene of a H.S. girl.  Dexter and his cop detective sister Deb discover a second teen girl is missing.  Dexter helps at a cannibal crime scene.  Dexter and Deb find out one missing girl was eaten.  Deb drags Dexter around Miami as she investigates the two interrelated crimes.

Dexter decides his daughter's arrival means he should stop his slice-and-dice playtime.  Dexter tells his step-kids they should also turn a new leaf.  Step-kids disagree with Dexter.  Insane Brother a bad influence, Dexter feels like Insane Brother is competition for Dexter's family role.

Things happen.  Dexter sneaks into a nightclub to find one missing girl.  Dexter captured.  Girl wants to be cannibalized and so did the other girl. Dexter rescued.  Girl rescued.  Girl disappears again (she wants to be eaten).  Dexter, Deb, and Deb's boyfriend go after missing girl.  Deb captured.  Dexter captured.  Boyfriend captured.  Missing Girl overcooked.  Insane Brother rescues them all.  Deb's Boyfriend takes off in fit of depression because he is still upset about having a hand and foot cut-off in a previous novel.  Deb is pregnant.  

Comments:
1. Loads of Lindsey alliteration love.
2.  Does Dexter know how funny he is?  Dexter narrates but would he realize how humorous he is without hearing someone laugh at what he says?
3.  So many of these Dexter novels are family dramas.  Dexter does not consider himself human; he has had to observe and learn behaviors and social skills without feeling the emotions that come with.  His outside and anthropological critiques of society include his family.  He feels loyalty to his step-sister but little to no emotion for her.  He does not love his wife but he loves the food she makes.  He is fond of his serial killers-in-training step-kids but love is too strong a word.
4.  The only things Dexter used to 'love' were food and slicing and dicing humans.  Now he feels love for his newborn.
4.a. Can sociopaths change?  Can they begin to feel emotions for others?  From what I have read this is debated.
5.  Crazy Miami traffic love.
6.  Cuban sandwich love.
7.  Full moon love.
8.  Deb is a hothead.
9. "Sensible people avoid abandoned amusement parks."
10.  I did not know Lindsay is a pen name.

2 comments:

pattinase (abbott) said...

Love the TV show but have never read the books. Probably too late now that a different trajectory is in my head.

Gerard Saylor said...

I think it's interesting how the tv show and novels have diverged. But, keeping the separate events of each must be difficult.

I wonder how much the new series based off Craig Johnson's novels, Longmire, will branch out.