I picked up Darkly Dreaming Dexter from the library at lunch on Wednesday. Despite having an afternoon trial that didn't get out until 6:30, needing to spend time AIMing with my current girlfriend in the evening, and a moderately busy morning on Thursday, I managed to slurp up this 280 odd page book before finishing a slightly extended lunch break on Thursday afternoon. It is the story of a sociopathic killer who works in a crime lab for the Miami police department and manages to channel his blood thirsty urges into only killing other sociopathic murderers (mostly). A very fun, but not particularly deep book.

As I was reading this book, I couldn't help but recall an interview on public radio I had listened to on Monday with the author of a non-fiction book on the city of Bombay in India called Maximum City. As part of the book, the author interviewed a politician who openly admitted to killing a Muslim in nationwide riots that occurred a few years ago. He and a large mob had gone hunting Muslims. They ran across the man who delivered the politician's bread every morning - a friendly fellow with whom he had had a casual acquaintance. The politician described how the man had begged them, telling them about his wife and kids. The mob told him that his kind had shown no mercy to those who had families centuries ago when they invaded. The politician then poured kerosene over the man, and then they lit him on fire.

In "Darkly Dreaming Dexter", eventually we learn the psychological background and the traumatic event that made that turned Dexter into a killer. In fiction novels like that we feel the need to "explain" why people can end up like Dexter, what makes them "different". I have trouble believing that everyone in the mob in Bombay that killed this innocent Muslim had gone through a "traumatic event" that made them different. I suspect that the politician at the center of that mob doesn't go home and lustfully finger a microscope slide with a drop of blood from that Muslim. I suspect that he and many others in that mob have relatively normal lives. No, I suspect that the "traumatic event" that made this man and that mob unflinching killers was simply being born human.

"Darkly Dreaming Dexter" is a excellent book though.