Dearly Devoted Dexter -- Jeff Lindsay
I have to make this quick, because if I don't hand the book over to Josh pronto, he's going to freak out. (He finished the first one last night and is just itching for the sequel.)
Everyone's favorite friendly neighborhood serial killer is back in action:
And so I had learned how to dress neatly and smile and brush my teeth. I had become a perfect fake human, saying the stupid and pointless things that humans say to each other all day long. No one suspected what crouched behind my perfect imitation smile. No one except my foster sister, Deborah, of course, but she was coming to accept the real me. After all, I could have been much worse. I could have been a vicious raving monster who killed and killed and left towers of rotting flesh in my wake. Instead, here I am on the side of truth, justice, and the American way. Still a monster, of course, but I cleaned up nicely afterward, and I was OUR monster, dressed in red, white and blue 100 percent synthetic virtue. And on those nights when the moon is loudest I find the others, those who prey on the innocent and do not play by the rules, and I make them go away in small, carefully wrapped pieces.
Poor Dexter. His co-worker, Sergeant Doakes, has been tailing him -- Doakes has his own Dark Passenger, see, and generally those with Dark Passengers recognize others for what they are -- so Dex hasn't been able to get to his nighttime gig very often lately. Instead, he's been spending lots of time sitting on the couch at his girlfriend's house drinking lite beer. He's miserable.
I loved this book. I really enjoyed the first book in the series, but I LOVED this one. Dexter's voice is so original and funny (and sometimes scary and creepy, but that's as it should be -- the guy IS a serial killer, after all):
...details like that always ring a small bell and send a Mister Rogers whisper through my brain: "Hello, neighbor."
Dex just doesn't care -- not because he's a jerk or anything, but because he doesn't have the capacity to -- and he's no Data. He doesn't want to care. He doesn't feel like he's missing out on anything. He's fine with who he is. His lack of empathy is part of what makes his narration so fabulous. Keep an eye out for the bit where he describes someone else's victim as a "yodeling potato". It was so, so wrong -- yet so, so right.