This is the end.

The end of the term is here, and I will not be posting until next year. I have feelings of both, accomplishment and great relief. As for my battle with CreComm term one... I win.

Book Review of Dexter By Design

Dexter By Design by Jeff Lindsay
Published September 2009

Jeff Lindsay has been known to wow his readers with gruesome details and out-of-this-world plots. In his latest work, Dexter By Design, the fourth in the Dexter series, he delivers the same style of writing, except this time, it’s tired and predictable.

While in Paris on his honeymoon, the main character Dexter attends an art show with his new wife Rita. The show consists of a young woman removing one of her limbs with a saw and videotaping the entire thing. Lindsay does a great job of describing the show, making the reader feel that they are actually experiencing the gruesome event. Holding true to the title, Lindsay makes it clear in the opening chapter what this novel is about: the dark and twisted side of art.

Upon returning home to Miami, Florida, Dexter is welcomed back to his work as a blood spatter investigator for the Miami Police Department, with an art display containing no blood at all. Two bodies are discovered with their entrails removed and a basket full of goodies inside the stomach. Dexter’s murderous inner voice, (which he refers to as his Dark Passenger), tells him this is no ordinary murder.

Unlike the first two novels in the series, Lindsay keeps the presence of the Dark Passenger rather hidden, referring to him rather sparingly compared to the past. Originally, the Dark Passenger used to determine how Dexter would act through most situations, now we hear next to nothing about it or from it. It is possible that Lindsay is trying to mature his main character, a tactic that does not bode well throughout the novel, and quite possibly might lose fans.

After his sister Deborah is attacked while interviewing a suspect, Dexter makes his first mistake in the series when he kills an innocent bystander instead of the actual murderer. Not only does he commit this foul act, he is also caught on video by the murderer. As Dexter is now under surveillance, the murder threatens to reveal Dexter’s secret identity to the world, a staple to every novel in the series.

Unlike the rest of the series, Lindsay fails to bring the story to a proper climax by misleading the readers too many times with major, action-packed events. Dexter is knocked out by an exploding house, saves his family after they were in a head on car collision with the murderer, and he goes to Cuba to kill the murderer. After all this, nothing happens. Lindsay is unsuccessful with his attempt at creating a suspenseful and thrilling roller-coaster ride.

Lindsay ends the novel with little to no excitement as he spends less time with the ending as he does explaining a confrontation between Dexter and the murderer in Cuba. It seems that Lindsay is losing the momentum that carried his series all the way to a television series. He’s still got the perfect mix of dark humor and grotesque murder scenes, but this time, he lost the one thing that counts, the element of surprise.