Dearly Devoted Dexter
Jeff Lindsay
 Sergeant Doakes, a detective in Homicide, has grown suspicious of Dexter and begun tailing him in his free time, making it impossible for Dexter to investigate (and perhaps kill) someone he suspects of complicity in the abduction, pornographic molestation and murder of a series of young boys. When an unknown man is found bizarrely mutilated, Doakes recognizes the work of a torturer nicknamed "Doctor Danco" (after a brand of knives), who served with Doakes during the Salvadoran Civil War and has come to Miami to take revenge on his former comrades. Danco drugs his victims with painkillers and psychotropics and, over a period of several days, surgically removes their limbs, genitalia, lips, tongue and eyelids, before leaving them to contemplate themselves in a carefully placed mirror. Dexter is drawn into the case when Danco abducts his sister Deborah's new boyfriend, detective Kyle Chutsky. Amidst all the chaos, Dexter finds himself accidentally engaged to his girlfriend Rita. He perceives a "dark passenger" similar to his own in Rita's children Astor and Cody, and looks forward to teaching them as his foster-father had taught him. At the climax of the story, Dexter learns that Danco's murder ritual includes a word game resembling hangman. Each victim is asked to guess a word chosen for them by Danco, each wrong answer – or unintelligible answer, after removal of the tongue – resulting in the amputation of a body part. cs:Drasticky dojemný Dexter es:Querido Dexter fr:Le Passager noir it:Il nostro caro Dexter lt:Dearly Devoted Dexter pl:Dekalog dobrego Dextera pt:Dearly Devoted Dexter ru:Добрый друг Декстер simple:Dearly Devoted Dexter fi:Dexterin kolkko kutsumus