Dexter

Poor Dexter -- he's just returned from a smashing honeymoon and is really getting to like the stability of married life when some inconvenient corpses start turning up. It looks like a serial killer with an especially macabre aesthetic bent may be on the loose. Oh, well.

Knife to Know You

Darker, more complex -- and as witty as ever -- Jeff Lindsay pits his ingeniously cheerful serial killer, Dexter Morgan, against two terrifying forces: an adversary who is so evil he scares Dexter's Dark Passenger into hiding...and a looming wedding date.

The book that introduced Dexter and created a legend, largely by fans' word-of-mouth. Fortunately that word got to the producers of the Showtime series, and their adaptation of the books has resulted in some of the most creative TV currently on view.

The second volume in the series was in no way a letdown -- in many respects Jeff Lindsay pushed the envelope a little futher, and Dearly Devoted Dexter is even more morbidly funny than the first book. People love the Dexter series because of the finesse with which it combines the droll and the disturbing.