Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Jeff Lindsay’s crime thriller Darkly Dreaming Dexter, the first book in the Dexter series, introduces a serial killer working as a blood spatter expert with the Miami Police Department. Now a major television series, Darkly Dreaming Dexter received an overwhelmingly positive reception following its publication. Critics praise its blend of dark humor and sharp plotting. A crime and mystery writer best known for the Dexter series, Lindsay is a graduate of Celebration Mime Theatre Clown School and Carnegie-Mellon University. His past jobs include playwriting, singing, comedy, and improvisation.

The protagonist is Dexter Morgan. By day, he works in forensics. By night, he is a serial killer. He doesn’t murder just anyone, however. Dexter chooses his targets very carefully, killing criminals such as rapists and murderers. When the law fails to convict a guilty person, Dexter steps in, administering his own brand of justice.

Dexter doesn’t know what makes him a murderer. All he knows is that a voice in his mind, a voice he calls the Dark Passenger, tells him to kill people. Once he kills someone, the voice quiets down, but Dexter knows it always comes back. Dexter doesn’t want to be a murderer, but he doesn’t know how else to live his life.



For years, Dexter has worked behind the scenes, identifying criminals who escape conviction and killing them when he’s not busy solving murders for the Miami Police Department. However, he can’t keep the charade up forever. One day, a new case comes in. Someone is murdering prostitutes in gruesome ways, and the police don’t know how to catch the killer.

Dexter’s sister, Deborah, also works for the police. She wants to impress her bosses and secure a promotion. She knows that Dexter is good at reading crime scenes; he has a special talent for profiling murderers. She wants his help catching this killer. Dexter knows that Deborah has no idea why he is so good at profiling murderers, and he wants to keep it that way. He reluctantly agrees to work with her on the case, but he makes it clear that it is the first and last case they will work on together.

Dexter visits the crime scenes and studies the evidence. The police nickname the murderer the “Tamiami Slasher” because of how he kills the victims. Dexter finds the blood patterns interesting. To him, they look like art. He is impressed by the killer’s finesse, even if he can’t tell anyone that. He wants to find this killer to learn more about him.



Meanwhile, readers learn more about Dexter through a series of flashbacks. Dexter’s foster father, Harry, was a highly respected police officer in the Miami Police Department. Although he loved Dexter, he knew the boy wasn’t typical. Profiling Dexter, he found he was a sociopath with murderous tendencies.

Harry asked Dexter about his desire to kill things. Dexter admitted he has evil thoughts and doesn’t know what to do about them. Since Dexter would eventually kill someone, Harry told him to only pick victims who have cheated the system. By killing murderers, Dexter would make those murderers feel what their own victims felt.

Dexter wanted to know more about killing people; he didn’t want to get caught. Harry taught him everything he knew about evidence collection and keeping crime scenes clean. He made Dexter promise to only ever kill guilty people; Dexter has lived by this promise ever since. He chose the police department so he could stay up-to-date on forensic techniques to avoid leaving evidence behind.



Back in the present, Dexter obsesses over the murderer. Following a refrigerator truck one day on a hunch, he discovers he is tracking the murderer. He doesn’t tell Deborah who the murderer is, yet, because he feels an unusual empathy for him. He isn’t used to feeling this way about anyone, especially not another murderer.

Meanwhile, Dexter kills someone else to control his murderous urges. Deborah suspects he knows something he is not telling her, but he promises he won’t hide evidence from her. He doesn’t tell her about the refrigerator truck—a decision he soon lives to regret. While Dexter is busy disposing of his own victim, the Tamiami Slasher kidnaps Deborah.

While the police frantically hunt for Deborah, the killer contacts Dexter directly. He tells Dexter where he is hiding Deborah. Dexter wonders if the killer knows who he is and what he does in secret. He goes to the killer’s location and waits for him to reveal himself. Before the killer shows himself, he lets Deborah go.



Once Deborah is safe, the killer steps out from the shadows. His name is Brian, and he is Dexter’s biological brother. When a drug dealer murdered their mother, leaving the boys as wards of the state, Harry’s family adopted Dexter but left Brian behind. Brian wants revenge for what happened.

Brian demands that Dexter should kill Deborah; she is only his foster sister, after all. Dexter refuses, telling Brian to leave. He doesn’t want the police to catch his brother. He relives the trauma of his mother’s murder, but he still isn’t ready to talk about it—not even to Deborah. Brian flees and Deborah is led to believe that the killer simply escaped.