Dexter’s last hurrah.
Think your family is dysfunctional? Bet you’ve never been jailed for murdering your wife, your mistress, and a famous actor. Dexter Morgan has, and it’s no consolation at all to know that his paramour, famous actress Jackie Forrest, and his wife, Rita, were both slain by equally famous actor Robert Chase, whose fans didn’t know about his pedophilia, and who was killed in turn by Dexter’s adopted daughter, 12-year-old Astor, on whom he’d set his sights. Dexter’s nemesis, Detective Anderson of the Miami-Dade Police, is either too dumb to see that he’s got the wrong man locked up or too small-minded to care, and Dexter’s long-suffering adoptive sister, Miami-Dade Sgt. Deborah Morgan, is convinced that coming to his aid this time would be tantamount to licensing more killing, even if he doesn’t happen to be guilty of the particular crimes he’s been jailed for. Fortunately, help arrives in the person of white-shoe attorney Frank Kraunauer, who gets his client sprung at the behest of Brian Morgan, Dexter’s equally sociopathic brother. While he waits for Anderson to gather enough evidence to justify several charges of homicide, Dexter decides to disobey his high-priced mouthpiece and gather some evidence of his own. He’s barely begun when he finds two dead Latinos in his hotel room. Even apart from the threat the discovery will pose to his freedom if Anderson gets wind of it, this can’t count as good news, especially since there’s every sign the two dead guys came prepared to kill. Who could possibly want to eliminate such a charmingly monstrous killer as Dexter (Dexter’s Final Cut, 2013, etc.)?
The mystery, as it is so often in this high-flying series, is a throwaway. But fans will rush through the forgettable plot double-quick in order to savor every moment of Dexter’s final hour.