Like millions of others, I was fascinated by the ‘Dexter’ TV series from Showtime. I watched and enjoyed all ninety.-six episodes (yes, I had to look that up – who knew there were so many?) between 2006 and 2013.

It’s been a long time since I visited with Dexter so I thought, instead of re-watching the TV series, I’d go back to the source and see what Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter looked like back in 2004. I’m glad I did, because now I have new series to follow and an opportunity to watch Dexter follow a slightly different path.

‘Dexter Season One’ followed ‘Darkly Dreaming Dexter’ pretty closely, so the plot wasn’t a surprise to me until the end, where the TV series deviated significantly from the book.

What was a surprise was how refreshing it was to be inside Dexter’s head where I could appreciate his humour, understand some of his genuine confusion about how people behaved, especially when it comes to sexual attraction, and get a clearer view of his relationship with his ‘Dark Passenger’. Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter is just as likeable but also more chilling than his TV doppelgänger.

Jeff Lindsay’s prose is clean and clear, effortlessly building empathy for Dexter while delivering a suspenseful plot lubricated by humour. The supporting characters are very clearly drawn, the dialogue is spot on and the pacing is perfect.

I listened to the audiobook version of ‘Darkly Dreaming Dexter’, which is narrated by Jeff Lindsay. Some authors read their own works well. Some are a disaster. I was delighted to find that Jeff Lindsay is an excellent narrator. As well as getting all the nuances of the book’s content across, he does the voices of the various characters very well.

So, with a different ending to the first Dexter book, and with great writing and narration by Jeff Lindsay, I’m now keen to listen to the rest of the books in the series.

Click on the SoundCloud link below if you’d like to hear a sample of Jeff Lindsay’s narration.