Character Notes:
History: Dexter's world is very similar to ours. There are good guys and there are bad. Dexter has a very strong opinion of what makes each up. Though Jeff Lindsay hints at a spiritual awakening inside Dexter and that the Dark Passenger is itself its own entity, this could also be attributed to Dexter's own instability. Either way, this world only asks us to stretch our suspension of disbelief insofar as much that a blood spatter analyst working in homicide's own house would not be identified for what he truly is: a serial killer.

In the first book (which runs almost exactly to the first season of the show), there is a mysterious killer on the loose who abducts hookers and drains them of their blood. Then he neatly chops their body parts and wraps them up like a Christmas surprise for Miami Metro. Dexter quickly gleans that this is a message for him and no one else, though he doesn't know the identity of the killer. Not yet anyway.

When Dexter was very young he witnessed the brutal murder of his mother, Laura Moser. Detective Harry Morgan was the first officer on the scene and he became Dexter's own personal savior. After days sitting in his mother's blood, he was able to have a haphazardly normal (ish) childhood, at least from an outsider's perspective. Not even his adopted sister Deborah knew the truth.

Harry knew that Dexter would be different than other children. That he would never feel compassion or love, but only the baser emotions. He would act solely on instinct and he began to harness this darkness from day one. His foster father called it his dark passenger, this impulse to kill that he claimed was completely out of Dexter's grasp or control. And so from early on he taught Dexter how to work the system from the inside out. How to fly under the radar and leave no trace so that even when his sister grew up to follow in the fated footsteps of her father, she wouldn't know the truth.

There was one very big chunk of the story missing however: Dexter wasn't alone in that shipping container; in his mother's blood. He had an older brother - Biney, he called him, because at the tender age of three he couldn't pronounce "Brian." Back up to the present, Deborah is taken and Dexter will stop at nothing to find his sister. Because if he could have feelings for anyone, he would have them for Debs. Though he's managed to fool everyone else, there is one man who thinks Dexter is a monster. Dexter's theory is that this man, Sergeant James Doakes, has a dark passenger of his own and his in turn recognizes the darkness in Dexter. Whatever the reason, he follows Dexter in pursuit of a man he identifies as his true biological brother, Brian Moser.

When Dexter arrives, Brian has Debs strapped to a table - he's been watching little brother's methods and he's willing to be flexible. He hands Dexter the knife and he truly hesitates. In the show it's a very clear win for the Code but in the books Dexter wants nothing more in that moment but to end Deborah's life. And if he isn't interrupted by the Lieutenant Maria LaGuerta he probably would have done the deed. Also unlike the show, Debs is awake for this whole process and in this she learns what her brother truly is. Brian sees that Dexter has chosen a fake sister over his true family and stabs Maria (lethally) and flees the scene. Though we don't see him again until much much later, he is always in Dexter's thoughts. The one person who could truly understand what he is and love him for it and he turned him away.

But in this knowledge Deborah doesn't turn away from her brother and instead comes to accept his darkness. It isn't a quick or easy transition by any means, but she had absolute faith in her father which she now invests in her brother. She knows he could have killed her and instead chooses to kill only the darkest of the dark. People Debs often thinks about killing herself. In a strange way, it brings the two closer in a way that Dexter never expected. He still finds himself caught off guard when she brings it up but he can deal with her knowing as long as she can. Though he's elder and often seems unfeeling, he turns to her for guidance in matters of humanity and she turns to him for all his knowledge of "creepy shit."

Though Maria's death conveniently left no witnesses, Doakes has still been watching him and adopts the phrase "I'm watching you motherfucker" pretty much every time he runs across Dexter in the hall. Though Dexter is confident he'll be able to slip the Sergeant's watchful gaze, this soon proves a hindrance on his extracurricular activities. He stakes himself out wherever Dexter might be and refuses to leave and so he spends more and more time with his girlfriend Rita.

Rita is a fragile soul, but she's also stronger than she appears. She's pretty and is always very presentable, but she never wears anything but running shoes. They often go running together to blow off steam. She has two children Astor and Cody and Dexter quickly comes to think of them all as his own. When Doakes stakes him out he goes to Rita's and drinks her beer and spends quality time with the kids. But the whole time he feels it, the need. The urge to kill.

Meanwhile, a man sent to them to help on a particularly horrifying case called Kyle becomes involved with Deborah. This new killer is not really a killer, but an architect of eternal torture. He kidnaps Kyle as his next pet project and sends the department his hand in the mail. On his pinky, Kyle wore a diamond ring. Dexter had taken it from evidence to give to his sister, but driven to Rita's by the ever present Doakes, the ring is accidentally intercepted by Rita herself. It rolls out of his pocket and Rita takes it as a marriage proposal. Dexter can't very well deny it and so the two are engaged.

Vince Masouka, who alongside Angel Batista and Dexter are the forensics department for Miami Metro, is Dexter's self-proclaimed best friend and thereby designates himself as the best man. This requires him to throw a huge bachelor party for Dexter. Doakes also follows him here but it's from Vince's house that the killer abducts him and begins working on him as well. Though he hardly fancies himself an actual hero, Dexter sets out to find Kyle and reluctantly Doakes. Though he saves them both it's not before some collateral damage has been exacted. Debs gets there before Dexter is harmed himself, but Doakes looses his feet, his hands and his tongue. They keep him on desk duty forever after and Dexter's life is pretty good again. Kyle ends up losing an arm and a leg but after extensive therapy he's more or less fine and he continues on dating Deborah.

In Dexter by Design, which is technically the fourth book of the series, though it directly follows the events in Dearly Devoted Dexter (2), Dexter and Rita can be found in Paris on their Honeymoon at the opening. Rita has the time of her life toting Dexter around like a Chanel purse, and Dexter endures. But while in the city of love, they encounter a sight that's decidedly devoid of all romance. It's a strange and disturbing exhibit called "Jennifer's Leg." Though Dexter feels the interest of the Dark Passenger immediately, he takes this as a sign that Rita should steer clear. But her morbid curiosity leads them on through to the very end. The exhibit is a series of animations in loop of Jennifer cutting the fat of her leg clean off the bone and eventually disconnecting it altogether. The very last case is Jennifer's leg itself, the bone preserved and on display for all to see. At the end of the showing, Jennifer herself comes out on crutches to see it and everyone is at once horrified and taken by the sight.

Upon returning to the states, Dexter is immediately thrown into a strange case called the Tourist Murders. Two tourists are killed and their bodies filled with strange knickknacks, all related to tourism and travel. On his own time, Dexter finds and kills a man he believes is a pedophile and carries on with his life. However, these two come crashing together when a witness testimony and mysterious videos on youtube start stacking up. The witness stated that two gay men who looked like typical tourists (cameras, Hawaiian shirts) were spotted right before the first murders took place. The man Dexter killed turns out to be one of those men and the other his boyfriend who has now been driven to kill in the absence of his love. The original murders were not murders at all but in fact a case of stolen body from the morgue plus a strange message to send to the police. That all changes when the killer sets his sights on Dexter instead.

His first true victim is Cody's cub scout leader, and he leaves behind a threat of a polaroid taken of Dexter and Cody. Dexter manages to get the photo before forensics sees it but it's a near thing. Then there are the youtube videos, implicating Dexter in the murder of the beloved boyfriend. None of them show his face, but they're certainly enough to get him to pay attention. There's a brief detour to Mexico that Kyle and Dexter take in pursuit of the Tourist Killer in order to kill him back, but this trip proves fruitless. Though Dexter does get pretty drunk out of the deal and the two men grow closer to the point of tolerating one another. Dexter learns that they aren't so different after all, as well.

They follow him back to the states when Dexter discovers his family is in danger. Rita has been abducted herself and put on display as she nears death. Dexter fears he won't find a way out but between the kids and Rita they overtake the killer and his arm is cut off by his own tablesaw which had been set up to decapitate Rita originally. Before the EMTs arrive on scene, he dies from blood loss and the Bennett-Morgans live happily ever after. Until next time.
Personality: Dexter is highly sociopathic, and quite likely narcissistic. He's out for his own interests, and doesn't care much about anyone who isn't a child or his sister. Because of a deeply repressed event: his mother's brutal murder that he witnessed at only 3 years old, Dexter feels the "need" to kill. His foster father and a homicide detective, Harry Morgan, taught Dexter how to 'aim' this need towards other murderers. It is in this way Dexter becomes the Dark Avenger. He claims that this urge needs to be sated once a month, much like a werewolf, and thinks of himself as a monster. That said he is also self-congragulatory as a lot of serial killers are. He believes he is doing the world a favor, and making it a safer place by killing criminals.

Dexter is highly organized and takes great pleasure in putting things in their 'rightful' places. He became a blood spatter analyst to cleanly file away the wet sticky mess that is blood. Dexter hates blood, more than anything in the world, but he is also inherently fascinated by it. From each victim he takes a drop of their blood and places it on a [microscope] slide so that he may "revisit" them at any time.

While Dexter is severely emotionally removed, he knows how to fake it well. Everyone in his life perceives him to be a well-adjusted and successful man. He is recently married to his girlfriend Rita, who was raped and beaten by her ex-husband. Her children, having been similarly abused, are like Dexter. They feel "the need" and he feels more connected to them for it. While he feels most children are "important," Astor and Cody are more important than all of them. And Dexter's self-glorification leads him to believe he can impart to them the ways of his foster father, and teach them to adhere to Harry's Code.

The Code is something that Dexter has allowed to define him as a person. The rules are simple, but the follow-through is considerably more: (1) Never get caught, (2) Only kill those who deserve it. Because his other persona makes Dexter feel infallible, he has come to see himself as more than human. It's clear he has a very high opinion of himself.

Because Harry always told him to take care of his sister, he always follows after her like an obedient puppy dog. Despite often thinking her ideas are rash or stupid, Dexter almost always follows her lead. In fact, that's a constant in Dexter's life. He seems to believe his ideas are the only intelligent ones quite often, but for the sake of keeping up appearances and forming 'connections,' he is quick to listen to others. LaGuerta, Deb, Rita, Vince are all examples of this.
Other:The third book, Dexter in the Dark, is part of the series but not the continuity. It is generally accepted by the author himself that these events are ignorable and never took place. It has a weird supernatural spin that the other books lack and seems to have a different overall tone as well. Though Dexter will be taken from after the fourth book, it will be as if the third never happened.