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#5 Platform - Darkly Dreaming Dexter
Jul. 3rd, 2007 10:37 pmCarefully crafted characters make for deliciously delightful detectives.
Book #26: Darkly Dreaming Dexter
Author: Jeff Lindsay
Provenance: Bookmooch
Upon finishing a non-fiction book that took me quite a while to read, this change over to lighter fiction seemed to call for something fast and easy. And boy, did this book fill the bill. I think I was only at it for a couple of days.
The story is fairly simple: we have a serial killer narrator, whose foster sister is a police officer, and who himself works as a blood spatter expert for the Miami police. In turn, another serial killer appears on the screen, and while he is entranced by the killings, he wants to help his sister solve the case and work her way up in the department hierarchy. There are a bunch of bodies that turn up over the course of the book, and a bunch of police politics.
It's a fairly straightforward tale, but really, the key to it is the style of the narration. The story, of itself, is an interesting enough mystery, but it's a bit thin, since there's really no way you could figure it out on your own. It's not that sort of mystery. It's more of a character study, in a sense, and the character is a very interesting one. The wordplay, and the coolness of the character, and the real feeling that he found his niche and he's just trying to stay in it, being as amused as he can, is very well played. Sure, he may be reprehensible, but it's a lot of fun to read him.
Anyway, this one is worth reading, if you're a fan of the genre. I'd track down the second one, but I think I'll wait and see if I can't get it through Bookmooch, as well. Or something like that.
Next up: Thank You For Smoking. While we're on the whole adaptation angle...
Book #26: Darkly Dreaming Dexter
Author: Jeff Lindsay
Provenance: Bookmooch
Upon finishing a non-fiction book that took me quite a while to read, this change over to lighter fiction seemed to call for something fast and easy. And boy, did this book fill the bill. I think I was only at it for a couple of days.
The story is fairly simple: we have a serial killer narrator, whose foster sister is a police officer, and who himself works as a blood spatter expert for the Miami police. In turn, another serial killer appears on the screen, and while he is entranced by the killings, he wants to help his sister solve the case and work her way up in the department hierarchy. There are a bunch of bodies that turn up over the course of the book, and a bunch of police politics.
It's a fairly straightforward tale, but really, the key to it is the style of the narration. The story, of itself, is an interesting enough mystery, but it's a bit thin, since there's really no way you could figure it out on your own. It's not that sort of mystery. It's more of a character study, in a sense, and the character is a very interesting one. The wordplay, and the coolness of the character, and the real feeling that he found his niche and he's just trying to stay in it, being as amused as he can, is very well played. Sure, he may be reprehensible, but it's a lot of fun to read him.
Anyway, this one is worth reading, if you're a fan of the genre. I'd track down the second one, but I think I'll wait and see if I can't get it through Bookmooch, as well. Or something like that.
Next up: Thank You For Smoking. While we're on the whole adaptation angle...
