The concept of someone with an uncontrollable urge to kill channeling that urge toward killing only evil people fascinates me. That someone is Dexter Morgan and we have something in common. Neither one of us were completely satisfied by the goings on in this novel. While Dexter will keep on killing to try and quench his thirst, I won’t be reading any further hoping to quench mine.

I first became aware of Dexter though the TV series. I had been curious about it for some time—when I finally binge watched the entire run I found it to be the very definition of erratic. Some of it was exhilarating, marvelous work but some of it was so mind-numbingly dumb that I questioned the existence of a benevolent God. While I thought the series ended on a high note, the final shot of the final scene was perfect, I couldn’t help wondering if the books would be better.

Regarding this first book in the series—meh! It managed to keep my interest tethered but never bound. If the TV series swung high and low, the book towed a modest steady line. In order to kill evil people Dexter has to find evil people and replacing some form of detective work with hunches and dreams got old really fast. The prose and pacing were fair and a tense scene in a house under construction was compelling and pardon the turn of phrase but well-constructed but contrasting his dark mind against the sunny Miami locale was soil left untilled. Maybe the author was thinking series from the beginning and thought he had only to whet the appetite with a first book. I would have preferred the whole meal.