DEARLY DEVOTED DEXTER By Jeff Lindsay

Published : 2005
Pages : 296
Overall Mark : 8/10

Dexter finds life increasingly difficult as he is stalked at every turn by Sergeant Doakes, who suspects Dexter of being up to something sinister, maybe even suspecting he’s a killer. Dexter finds himself having to retreat further into his “fake” life with Rita, and even goes as far as to get engaged to her. Things do start to become easier for him though when a criminal from Doakes’s past shows up, a criminal known as Dr Danco who brutally mutilates his victims by chopping off their arms, legs and genitals, and cuts off their eyelids and tongue, but leaves them alive, earning them the slightly evil nickname of the Singing Potatoes. This killer could spell a reprive for Dexter because he’s after all the members of the Black Ops team of which Doakes was a member.

With all of the character’s already introduced in the first novel, this left us with a lot more time to get to know the criminal in this novel, as well as focus on fewer characters. The criminal here, Dr Danco, is a lot more gruesome than the Ice Truck Killer in the first novel, and it would have been interesting to see him transferred to the small screen in the Dexter TV show, but sadly it doesn’t look like this will be happening. I look forward to Jeff Lindsay’s next installemtn, Dexter After Dark, which I’ll hopefully be reading soon.