Australian Penthouse

Karma Killer

Dexter is a rare piece of literary genius—a lovable serial killer with a conscience. Australian Penthouse crawls inside the mind of its creator

You may have seen the slew of posters around town depicting a blood-stained, smiling young man called Dexter. The brainchild of author Jeff Lindsay (whose works include Hunting with Hemingway, which he co-wrote with his wife, Hilary (Ernest Hemingway’s niece), Dexter has become a roaring success—a disturbing anti-hero whose stream of consciousness and sense of humour belies his dark, murderous intentions.
As a boy Dexter is a mass murderer in the making, until his father, a cop, channels his craving into picking out the evil-doers who slip through the judicial system. More importantly, he carefully guides his son in the art of not getting caught. Thus, a blood splatter expert for Miami Police Forensics by day, Dexter becomes a vigilante killer by night.

After three novels and a hugely successful TV series, Jeff Lindsay reveals how to create a sympathetic serial killer.

Did you think the book would be as successful as it has been?
I didn’t have a big long-term plan for this, I just figured I’d write this one and if I was lucky enough, somebody would publish it. But the contract I have with the publisher specifically requires me to write Dexter books, so that’s what I’m doing. To be honest I’m astonished, of course everyone wants this to happen. The goal I set myself was to make a serial killer sympathetic. I was surprised that not only was he sympathetic, but people began falling in love with him.

What were your main influences?
I had a Romanian directing teacher, he would do a scene that you would laugh at and then go ‘eewww’, and I asked him, “are you doing that on purpose?” He said: “Yeah, I make the audience to laugh, and then make them feel like zis is illegal.” So I adopted that illegal laugh straight away. That’s what I love to see – people saying: “Hey isn’t that funny,” and then, “ewww you laughed didn’t you?”

It’s all about duality. We do a lot of covering up in our lives, and we’re all a lot closer to being Dexter’s than we think, we just don’t admit it and don’t express it. It’s just the last few hundred years we’ve been teaching ourselves killing is wrong. Killing is not a good thing and I don’t think Attila the Hun would go along with that, or anybody else in history.

Was it difficult handing your Dexter ‘baby’ over to TV execs?
That was the part that worried me the most. I didn’t think they could do it, but they did. At first I was standoffish, so when they butchered it, I wouldn’t be too close. But after the first day on the set, I realised how good Michael C. Hall [the actor who plays Dexter in the series] was. He nailed it, and has done a great job. I kept waiting for the shoe to drop, but it never did.

So taking Cody, the young son of Dexter’s girlfriend, down that serial killer path, isn’t that taboo?
It’s tough delving. It’s something that I think is necessary and I’ve kinda already promised the readers this was going to happen, but it doesn’t make it any easier to do. This is probably the biggest taboo (child serial killers). That makes it all the more attractive to me too. Because that’s how the whole series started, messing with those taboos.

Who did you model Deb, Dexter’s sister, on?
One of my friend’s wives was the model for Debbie, she was a homicide detective and her nickname was Einstein. I asked her once: “Is that because you’re smart? Do you solve a lot of cases?” She says with this completely deadpan cop face, “No, because if my tits were brains I’d be Einstein.”

Do you suffer from writer’s block?
There was a lot of frustration as to where the book was going. It was fighting back. A couple of times, it didn’t want to go where it was supposed to. It took two or three times as long to write it as I thought it would. At a certain point you have to stand up and be a man, and say: “Character, do what I fucking tell you, or you’re outta here! You can be replaced…”

And what does the future hold for the kind killer?
I don’t know. In the middle of Dexter in the Dark there were days that I thought seriously about having someone bump him (Dexter) on the head, and throw him into a canal, and Cody would take over the story. In the foreseeable future, that’s probably what I’ll be doing.

Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay, as well as Darkly Dreaming Dexter and Dearly Devoted Dexter are available from all major bookstores. Dexter is currently screening on Foxtel’s Showtime.

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