Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsey

It's that moon again, slung so fat and low in the tropical night,

calling across a curdled sky and into the quivering ears of that dear old voice in the shadows, the Dark Passenger, nestled snug in the backseat of the Dodge K-car of Dexter's hypothetical soul.

Opening to chapter one of Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay

There are three ways a literary series can go.  Each successive book can offer essentially more of the same.  What the reader enjoyed in one book is repeated in the next, with just enough variation to keep it all entertaining.  This worked for Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, for P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster and for Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone.  What keeps bringing the audience back for more is not so much the "crime" but the "detective."  We enjoy seeing just how Holmes will solve the case or how Jeeves will make sure Bertie's latest caper works out.  The details of the problem itself are of secondary interest.

The second way for a series to go is to up the ante somehow, to make each successive plot top the ones that proceeded it.  A mystery/crime series begins with a simple crime of passion.  The next book involves a serial murder.  Then a child rapist, a mother who kills her own children, incestuous Nazis, ad infinitem.  Eventually, credulity can't help but become strained.  

The third way, character development, does not warrant consideration.  Do we really want to know about Sherlock Holmes's childhood trauma or what Jeeves's love life was like?  One is unlikely to find coffee stains on these pages in a used book store because they have been skipped by readers anxious to get on with the story.

(Spoiler Alert)

Dearly Devoted Dexter, the second book in the Dexter series,  takes route two with a few brief detours down route three.  Dexter's back story is part of what made the first novel so interesting.  How a serial killer came to kill only other serial killers is an interesting plot line.  But it is at heart, ridiculous.  Looking at this question too closely can't help but reveal just how unlikely it is.  It's dangerous ground for an author to tread and risks revealing the series concept as essentially flimsy. 

The second problem comes from upping the ante.  The first novel featured a gruesome killer, so the second must feature a worse one.  Dearly Devoted Dexter's killer leads the author into territory that is more ridiculous than believable.  This killer tortures his victims by slowing amputating them until they are nothing but living torsos.  It's horrible, certainly worse than what the killer in the previous novel did, but it's also a bit silly.  Think about it.  Late in the book, one victim, a detective, gets away after losing an arm and a leg.  When he insists on continuing to be a part of the investigation the book becomes laughable.  I've just lost an arm and a leg but I'm not going to stop working on this case.  It's only a flesh wound. 

I purchased Dearly Devoted Dexter to occupy the five hours it takes to ride the train from New Haven to Washington, D.C.  In that sense the book succeeds.  The pages kept turning as America passed by and I finished the book shortly before I arrived.  I enjoyed it enough for it to serve it's purpose well.   But murder by piecemeal amputation?  Come on.  Really?