Dexter is Delicious, by Jeff Lindsay

(hb; 2010: fifth book in the Dexter series)

From the inside flap:

"Dexter Morgan's happy homicidal life is undergoing some major changes. He's always lived by a single golden rule -- he kills only people who deserve it. But the Miami blood-spatter analyst has recently become a daddy -- to an eight-pound curiosity named Lily Anne -- and strangely, Dexter's dark urges seem to have left him. Is he ready to become an overprotective father? To pick up soft teddy bears instead of his trusty knife, duct tape, and fishing wire? What's a serial killer to do?

"Then Dexter is summoned to investigate the disappearance of an eighteen-year-old girl who seems to have been abducted by a bizarre group. . . who just may be vampires. . . and -- possibly cannibals. Nothing like the familiar hum of his day job to get Dexter's creative dark juices flowing again. Assisting his bull-in-a-china-shop detective sister, Deborah, Dex wades into an investigation that gets more disturbing by the moment. And to compound the complication of Dexter's ever-more-complicated life, a person from his past suddenly reappears. . . moving dangerously close to his home turf and threatening to destroy the one thing that has maintained Dexter's pretend human cover and kept him out of the electric chair: his new family."

Review:

Dexter takes his Dark Passenger -- or, as his step-son, Cody, calls it, his "Shadow Guy" -- on another pinball-ricochet ride of family craziness, wit, near-ruin and death (possibly his own).

Dexter is Delicious is another blast-through-it, funny, subversive take on American life from Lindsay, with an effective wraps-it-up-for-now, sequel-friendly finish.

Worth owning, this.

Followed by Double Dexter.