Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
Meet Dexter Morgan. He's a highly respected lab technician specializing in blood spatter for the Miami Dade Police Department. He's a handsome, though reluctant, ladies' man. He's polite, says all the right things, and rarely calls attention to himself. He's also a sociopathic serial killer whose "Dark Passenger" drives him to commit the occasional dismemberment. Mind you, Dexter's the good guy in this story.
Wow! is about all I can say. Very well written and definitely engaging story. The ending was a bit predicible but such an interesting premise. I listened to it on CD and it was very well done.
Dearly Devoted Dexter finally is here!
Dexter's just added his 40th victim, a homicidal pedophile, and is eagerly looking ahead to number 41 but Dexter's nemesis, Sergeant Doakes, is getting a little too close for comfort. So he decides to act normal and starts hanging out with his "girlfriend" Rita & her kids playing games and drinking lite beer. He is almost becoming normal.
His sister Deborah, now a detective for the Miami-Dade Police Department, is called in on a case that even give Dexter pause for thought. A man is found with "everything on [his] body cut off, absolutely everything"—a piece of work that makes Dexter's own tidy killings look like child's play. This madman, nicknamed Danco, spends weeks surgically removing his victims' ears, lips, nose, arms, legs, etc., while keeping them alive to watch their own mutilation. Despite a certain professional admiration for Danco's dexterity, Dexter decides to take on the case. Plus Deborah's boyfriend has been snatched as the latest victim. Danco is after those who turned on him during U.S.'s involvement in South America.
It's the contradictions in Dexter's character that make it all work—he's smart, he's funny, he cares for children, and yet he has no normal human responses or emotions.
Hopefully additional titles will follow.