Sinister Dexter, Role Model

Fiorella's toaster brain has been hard at work lately, popping up plot twists and clever wording while she sleeps, then presenting them all ready to digest when she wakes. At the same time, her writing style is being sharpened by that skillful wielder of the word, knife, and scalpel, Dexter Morgan.

Yes, Fio is reading Jeff Lindsay again, catching up on the exploits of the TV's favorite serial killer. The books, though, follow a different story line than TV: Rita, Dexter's wife, is still up and running; the kids, Cody and Astor, remain on the premises; and Dexter's baby is a girl rather than a boy.

Let's face it--most of Lindsay's plots are preposterous--but the stories are so well-written that we don't care.

"...the clouds glower and bunch and wait, letting the need build. and the tension grows with it," Lindsay writes. "In only a few moments these dark and silent clouds will shatter the silence of the night with the unbearable bright omnipotence of their might and blast the darkness into flickering shards--and then, only then, the release will come."

Yum.