-
Welcome
to BookAndReader! We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!
Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.
December 2013: Jeff Lindsay: Darkly Dreaming Dexter
- Thread starter Meadow337
- Start date
Peder
Well-Known Member
Peder
Well-Known Member
Hmm. That sounds encouraging, which is exactly what I need at this point. Thanks.
Sorry, at least I didn't tell you WHO the Bad Guy is or what happens in the end
Actually I was serious.
I did need the encouragement, and your comment did not spoil anything for me.As for the bad guy, I never can guess who he is, so I just read mysteries as ordinary stories and find out at the end.
This one, though I did read all of it, was not to my taste and I think that is the end of Dexter for me. Too warped (and wordy).
Peder
Well-Known Member
ROTFLOL. Love your reply, just love it.Well then it is a wonderfully book with a great ending.
Meadow337
Former Moderator
ok LOL I'm finished.
Well it was kind of a remarkably unsatisfying ending. And I don't think I'm going to be reading any more any time soon because what a cast of the most unsympathetic characters. The 'victims' were nameless and faceless non-entities so you never had any sympathy for them except briefly and even almost not really because they were always presented in a very dehumanised way.
I'd almost suspect the author of having a personality disorder himself.
AHA!!!
Creating a serial killer who kills other killers - CNN.com
I have to question the basic premise. A child/children found in such circumstances would have court mandated psychiatric care yes? They wouldn't be separated, because I thought they didn't separate siblings any more yes? And as for falling into the hands of a cop who, as adoptive parent taught the psycho killer how to be a better, more careful pyscho killer? They don't do any psych testing for adoptive parents?
And if he had used 'majesty of the court' just one more time I think I would've hurled the book out the window (that is if I was reading a book and not my e-reader!)
Well it was kind of a remarkably unsatisfying ending. And I don't think I'm going to be reading any more any time soon because what a cast of the most unsympathetic characters. The 'victims' were nameless and faceless non-entities so you never had any sympathy for them except briefly and even almost not really because they were always presented in a very dehumanised way.
I'd almost suspect the author of having a personality disorder himself.
AHA!!!
Creating a serial killer who kills other killers - CNN.com
I have to question the basic premise. A child/children found in such circumstances would have court mandated psychiatric care yes? They wouldn't be separated, because I thought they didn't separate siblings any more yes? And as for falling into the hands of a cop who, as adoptive parent taught the psycho killer how to be a better, more careful pyscho killer? They don't do any psych testing for adoptive parents?
And if he had used 'majesty of the court' just one more time I think I would've hurled the book out the window (that is if I was reading a book and not my e-reader!)
Sparhawk
Active Member
I have to agree with you Meadow. I didn't really care about any of them. I couldn't get upset about what he did or didn't do and the end of the book was in no way redeeming of his character. Yes a suppose he "did the right thing" in warped kind of way but it just wasn't...right.
Peder
Well-Known Member
I'm not entirely sure he did the right thing. Deb was a dolt for all to see, and even Lt Guerta pegged her that way. Lt. Guerta on the other hand at least had the investigative sense to track down Dexter at the end and, though she was not the brightest bulb as a detective and was an unlikable conniving self-centered being, she hadn't done anything that "deserved killing." So, for me the book was a total hodge-podge that had me at odds with it from beginning to end.
To try to give the author his due, perhaps he was trying to construct a story around a person who was completely and highly intellectual while at the same time being completely devoid of feelings or emotions. All "head" no "heart." Even at that I think he failed at trying to follow any such theme to a coherent story. Or maybe Dexter was both "no brain" and "no heart" since he couldn't resolve the simplest questions about how to apply his father's rules. Leave his sister to her fate? No way! Under any interpretation of his father's rules. Entertaining the thought (urge?) of killing her himself? Preposterous!
I think one definition of a "monster" is something like an inappropriate assemblage of disparate parts, and I think Dexter would fit such a definition. However I would not at all characterize him (as the author seems to hope) as a "good" monster. To me he is monster through and through and a "bad monster," at that, without any redeeming virtues.
Enough!
To try to give the author his due, perhaps he was trying to construct a story around a person who was completely and highly intellectual while at the same time being completely devoid of feelings or emotions. All "head" no "heart." Even at that I think he failed at trying to follow any such theme to a coherent story. Or maybe Dexter was both "no brain" and "no heart" since he couldn't resolve the simplest questions about how to apply his father's rules. Leave his sister to her fate? No way! Under any interpretation of his father's rules. Entertaining the thought (urge?) of killing her himself? Preposterous!
I think one definition of a "monster" is something like an inappropriate assemblage of disparate parts, and I think Dexter would fit such a definition. However I would not at all characterize him (as the author seems to hope) as a "good" monster. To me he is monster through and through and a "bad monster," at that, without any redeeming virtues.
Enough!
I'm reading this on my commute to work. I can't say I like the writing style much but will keep keeping on for now.
As an example:
What he is trying to do here? Add in as many c-words as he possibly can? The lack of commas between these word also seems off.
So yes, so far, narrative is clunky and the words chosen poorly. I don't like it when people write with a thesaurus in one hand.
As an example:
What he is trying to do here? Add in as many c-words as he possibly can? The lack of commas between these word also seems off.
So yes, so far, narrative is clunky and the words chosen poorly. I don't like it when people write with a thesaurus in one hand.
Ha. Finished it.
The idea of Dexter being some sort of avenging angel for those whose assailants could somehow not be apprehended and dealt with by the law in the proper way certainly is a novel one but not a very well portrayed or thought-out one in this case.
Dexter, according to himself in his endless interior monologue, is a monster and classes himself as distinctly not human, unlike everyone around him. This annoys me. A lot. I know that in the media criminal offenders are often labelled as "monsters", what they have done is terrible but they are still human. Dexter plays into this, making the criminal so markedly different from ordinary people insomuch that he is no longer human but an evil entity.
Incidentally, the notion of him not being human is contradicted throughout the novel, especially when he is interacting with Deb.
As I posted before, the narrative style isn't the best. Lindsay appears to be incapable of writing paragraphs longer than three lines (on my Kindle!), all consisting of very short sentences. And then there's the alliteration…
OK. So he is describing "the Need" which, except for strong, is also a series of words starting with the letter c, words which could've been used to describe a cold-hearted criminal (see what I did there?) Just c's, you ask? O no, no, no, Lindsay knows a bunch of d-words, too:
Does this even make sense? Seriously, I get the point, the guy is a bit of a weirdo, a freak, but I'm pretty sure he's not in the habit of spending his lonely evenings curled up in a comfy chair with the Oxford English Dictionary on his lap to pick out all words starting with C or D to describe himself or that pesky Dark Passenger.
Aside from alliteration, Lindsay is fond of describing the same scene with the same set of emotions for Dexter, the same wordings even. For instance, every time Dexter sees one of the victims bloodless bodies he becomes dizzy. And not just any ordinary run-of-the-mill type of dizzy, o not in the slightest, he is always only "just a little dizzy". The same happens when Dexter goes out for a drive: he comments on the traffic being "lethal", or gives it another murderous adjective, either prior to getting into his car or after he has survived another commute.
As a final point of annoyance, and this is a major one: Dexter is portrayed as having some sort of other-wordly intelligence (any normal person might mistake it for common sense, but not the characters in this book). Everyone except Dexter is exceptionally dim-witted. LaGuerta is insensitive about anything going on around her except for handling the politics going on at the police station, at this she is an expert. Deborah is incapable of coming to the most simple conclusions, even if the evidence is right in front of her face it has to be practically spelled out for her to understand it.
Literally everyone in the novel is an imbecile to the point that it surprises me that they are able to perform the most mundane tasks and haven't forgotten to eat. Everyone else's stupidity helps to make Dexter's intelligence shine out, he is smarter than everybody else. The one time Deborah does have a good idea, namely to have another look at the ice rink, Dexter immediately concludes that "You're right, the arena. You are right for all the wrong reasons, but still -" (I'll overlook the fact that it is absolutely impossible for Dexter to know how exactly Deborah got the idea of going to the arena again).
I don't think I'll read any more of the Dexter series. I do enjoy the TV series, in it the characters surrounding Dexter aren't as annoyingly obtuse and Dexter himself isn't quite so annoyingly smarter than everyone else.
perhaps 2.5, I'm feeling the tiniest bit generous.
I do apologise if this seems a bit of a long ramble.
The idea of Dexter being some sort of avenging angel for those whose assailants could somehow not be apprehended and dealt with by the law in the proper way certainly is a novel one but not a very well portrayed or thought-out one in this case.
Dexter, according to himself in his endless interior monologue, is a monster and classes himself as distinctly not human, unlike everyone around him. This annoys me. A lot. I know that in the media criminal offenders are often labelled as "monsters", what they have done is terrible but they are still human. Dexter plays into this, making the criminal so markedly different from ordinary people insomuch that he is no longer human but an evil entity.
Incidentally, the notion of him not being human is contradicted throughout the novel, especially when he is interacting with Deb.
As I posted before, the narrative style isn't the best. Lindsay appears to be incapable of writing paragraphs longer than three lines (on my Kindle!), all consisting of very short sentences. And then there's the alliteration…
OK. So he is describing "the Need" which, except for strong, is also a series of words starting with the letter c, words which could've been used to describe a cold-hearted criminal (see what I did there?) Just c's, you ask? O no, no, no, Lindsay knows a bunch of d-words, too:
Does this even make sense? Seriously, I get the point, the guy is a bit of a weirdo, a freak, but I'm pretty sure he's not in the habit of spending his lonely evenings curled up in a comfy chair with the Oxford English Dictionary on his lap to pick out all words starting with C or D to describe himself or that pesky Dark Passenger.
Aside from alliteration, Lindsay is fond of describing the same scene with the same set of emotions for Dexter, the same wordings even. For instance, every time Dexter sees one of the victims bloodless bodies he becomes dizzy. And not just any ordinary run-of-the-mill type of dizzy, o not in the slightest, he is always only "just a little dizzy". The same happens when Dexter goes out for a drive: he comments on the traffic being "lethal", or gives it another murderous adjective, either prior to getting into his car or after he has survived another commute.
As a final point of annoyance, and this is a major one: Dexter is portrayed as having some sort of other-wordly intelligence (any normal person might mistake it for common sense, but not the characters in this book). Everyone except Dexter is exceptionally dim-witted. LaGuerta is insensitive about anything going on around her except for handling the politics going on at the police station, at this she is an expert. Deborah is incapable of coming to the most simple conclusions, even if the evidence is right in front of her face it has to be practically spelled out for her to understand it.
Literally everyone in the novel is an imbecile to the point that it surprises me that they are able to perform the most mundane tasks and haven't forgotten to eat. Everyone else's stupidity helps to make Dexter's intelligence shine out, he is smarter than everybody else. The one time Deborah does have a good idea, namely to have another look at the ice rink, Dexter immediately concludes that "You're right, the arena. You are right for all the wrong reasons, but still -" (I'll overlook the fact that it is absolutely impossible for Dexter to know how exactly Deborah got the idea of going to the arena again).
I don't think I'll read any more of the Dexter series. I do enjoy the TV series, in it the characters surrounding Dexter aren't as annoyingly obtuse and Dexter himself isn't quite so annoyingly smarter than everyone else.
perhaps 2.5, I'm feeling the tiniest bit generous.I do apologise if this seems a bit of a long ramble.
Surely there are other options when you find out - quite early on, in the pre-homicidal stage - that your adoptive son is a psychopath besides training him to become a perfect criminal who can never be caught thanks to his knowledge of law enforcement.
If anyone who knows how the police operates and tackles crime-scenes and how one might avoid being found out, why is it that murderers who are also policemen do actually get caught?
Meadow337
Former Moderator
That was one of the big questions I had the whole way through. It was quite a basic research flaw I thought.
Lindsay watches too much television. Crime shows in particular. He has the psychological profile down to Dexter starting with little dogs.
Because, don't all killers do that? Of course, they also come from broken homes, usually abusive, something incredibly traumatic happens to them like watching someone get murdered or being abused by a family member, and then the kid has nothing else to do but to resort to violence himself. At first it isn't so bad, they don't kill any humans yet but start small: neighbour's dog or cat, fillet a raccoon, or torture a bird or two. Unfortunately, small prey will not satisfy for very long and our killer-t0-be has to go to something bigger. Well isn't it amazingly convenient to have a foster dad who is a cop, knows how to avoid being caught (daddy a killer too, perchance?), and, even better, is willing to train our little psychopath to become a killer who doesn't only kill for the thrill, no, he is only killing the bad guys.
All makes perfect sense, really.
Because, don't all killers do that? Of course, they also come from broken homes, usually abusive, something incredibly traumatic happens to them like watching someone get murdered or being abused by a family member, and then the kid has nothing else to do but to resort to violence himself. At first it isn't so bad, they don't kill any humans yet but start small: neighbour's dog or cat, fillet a raccoon, or torture a bird or two. Unfortunately, small prey will not satisfy for very long and our killer-t0-be has to go to something bigger. Well isn't it amazingly convenient to have a foster dad who is a cop, knows how to avoid being caught (daddy a killer too, perchance?), and, even better, is willing to train our little psychopath to become a killer who doesn't only kill for the thrill, no, he is only killing the bad guys.
All makes perfect sense, really.
Last edited:
Uh-huh, should've been noticed, just like disappearing pets should be noticed, and criminals who weren't convicted turning up dead should be, too.
Just not in Lindsay's world.
Just not in Lindsay's world.