Dexter in the Dark is one of the most underrated books I’ve ever read. I’ve read a lot of reviews of this book, and I find the greater proportion of them are viciously negative toward it.

And I know why.

Many people reading the Jeff Lindsay books are fans of the TV Series. My many customers who purchase the first book do so because they’re in love with a television character and expect the books to be exactly the same. They are coming at the book in the wrong direction. They’re like kangaroos on the Hume Highway staring into the lights of a truck and thinking they must certainly be Christmas lights because they’ve been told an awful lot about them. Little wonder they get spread across the highway in disappointment.

I’m a big fan of the first three books in the Dexter series. They moved with an elegant and obvious progression of ideas relating to the madness of a sociopath. Fully aware of what he is, and completely unrepentant, Dexter is every inch the anti-hero. The joy of reading the book over the TV Series is the endless amused confusion Dexter faces as he attempts to hide among humans, knowing full well he is a monster. It’s similar to reading a vampire novel, wherein the vampire is deathly afraid of anyone knowing his true nature. Dexter fears these consequences, and as such makes many sacrifices along the way simply to keep himself under the radar.

I like his character very much, but it wasn’t until the third novel when I feel he really flowered.

In teaching the children of his girlfriend (chosen simply as another defence against suspicion), how to be little killers themselves, his philosophy and possible madness is presented in the argument that the Dark Passenger, or his killing instinct, is actually a kind of spirit possessing him. It is the source of his confidance and his power. Without it, he is weak and afraid. It is a very fantasy element, and one which raises the series from simple crime humour to urban fantasy in a way which is cheeky as much as it is genius.

The Dark Passenger concept was, for me, working very well. It started to work even more when there are revealed to be others, and they fight amongst themselves. It became interesting.

It was hard to discern, too, how much was Dexter’s imagination, and how much was the reality. In giving Dexter his Dark Passenger, Mister Lindsay gave him the “voices” many killers claim is their reason for killing. He’s almost offering a fantasy reason for why such people are born and created. It’s a wonderful idea, and one which I feel was working so well.

Until the TV fans came along and with their vitriolic tongues spread nonsense about the place.

And, while the TV Series is watchable, from the end of the first season, it veered dramatically off into slickland, avoiding any of the real fun of the character. Such as his teaching the children how to be Wednesday and Pugsley, and the exploration of his own inner psyche. The TV fans demanded their Dexter be in print.

The fourth novel, then, was absolute rubbish. Pretty much abandoning the whole direction he had been going in, the fourth was simply a script for the series in my opinion. It was written entirely to placate these hordes of morons, and possibly to convince the TV people to maybe follow at least one book other than the first. It is, then, to my horror, that I get so many customers complain about the third, and then say something utterly ill-informed like, “But the fourth was much better!”

What a crock.

Anyone interested in urban fantasy would do well to read the frst trilogy. It’s got everything you could want in a good novel. Humour, violence, mystery and fantasy. It’s a wonderful creation, and one I hope Mister Lindsay feels inclined to return to and enjoy as he so obviously did with Dexter in the Dark.

Please bring him back, Mister Lindsay. Back to the dark where he belongs. Not the shiny Hollywoody slickness that TV has created.

Yay to IT!