LITERATURE
Are some of the characters in the Dexter series based on people you’ve known in real life, or did you dream them all up? Some of them I’ve based on people I I’ve known but I wouldn’t say they look much like them. Like, for example, one of the people who helped me tremendously in writing the first book and starting the series was this Miami homicide sergeant, and she was really the inspiration for Deborah. There’s even a joke that Deborah tells in there about her nickname that came from my friend sergeant, Alison. I asked her one time, “Do cops have nicknames like they do on TV?” And she goes, “Yeah, they do”. And so I asked “Do you have a nickname?” And she said “Yeah, they call me Einstein”. And I said, “Oh Einstein, is that because you’re smart and you solve all the murders?” and she said “No, it’s because if my tits were brains, I’d be Einstein”. So that had to go in. How do you feel about the way your novels have been translated for television? Well it’s been one of my favourite TV shows, and I must admit, I kind of get a little thrill every time I see my name up there. It’s like if you’re watching your favourite TV show and your name pops up in the opening credits, there’s this moment of disconnection then reconnection, where you go “Oh yeah that’s right, I wrote a lot of that, yeah”. So it’s quite a surreal moment when you see your credit? Yeah. But you know the story lines are very different from mine, though it’s still recognisable – my characters, my world – and it’s done at a really high level. As I said, I worked in Hollywood for 12 years, so I know what usually happens where writers’ works are completely changed, and that didn’t happen to me; and I’ll always be grateful because the producers have done a wonderful job. Has the show influenced you in adjusting plot lines for consequential books? No, there’s no cross-pollination at all except that occasionally they couldn’t resist taking one of my good lines, and I usually figure that out by watching the show. I’ll be laughing and say that’s a great line and my wife will smack me and say, “Idiot, that’s your line”. What about cross-pollination of everyday current affairs or pop cultural themes? To a certain extent everything you write is going to have an element of news, pop culture or current affairs to it, because if you’re any good at all and trying to be honest about a subject, you’re going to research the here and now.
Why do you think our society is so infatuated with dark themes in television today, to the point of enjoying seeing so many dysfunctional characters, from Family Guy to Fargo? Well I blame the Republican Party, but that may just be me [coughing exaggeratingly]. I don’t think I’ve heard so many coughs after the word ‘Republican’ before. I do have a thing [a cold] so it’s not merely politics that’s making me cough. I really don’t know, I think it’s just a general fact that we’ve always been fascinated by dysfunction. Do you think these fictional characters have an influence on society at large? No. I mean its entertainment. I can’t imagine that this has any real effect on anybody. Yeah, the nuclear family is being chipped away at, but the pressures are more economic than anything else. It’s become necessary to have two salaries for the average home and that’s a whole lot more significant than watching some TV show or reading a book. You must agree that watching today’s dysfunction on television kind of steers us away from the goody-goody ethos of old shows like The Waltons and The Brady Bunch. The Waltons and The Brady Bunch and were no more real than The Mentalist. Hollywood is always presenting alternatives to reality. That’s why we watch it. Even the so-called reality shows; they’re no more real than Gilligan’s Island. It’s something we watch to take our minds off reality. Ultimately, Hollywood does what the numbers tell them to, and to some extent so does publishing, which is what I’m in, after all. It’s what people want to see, so the networks make more of it… And I get paid more to write books about it! ▪ ‘Dexter Is Dead’ by Jeff Lindsay will be published by Hachette Australia on April 14, 2015, RRP $29.99 and on eBook, RRP $16.99 through Orion. www.rockcandymagazine.com.au | 57
It wasn’t supposed to end this way. In a flash of steel, a flurry of gunshots, a chorus of strangled moans, blending with the wails of sirens, certainly. A properly dramatic ending, with a good body count, a dash of treachery, absolutely. But not with Dexter, serial killer and forensic blood spatter analyst, horribly wronged and unjustly accused of the wrong murder, languishing inside the Guilford Knight Correctional Centre, bound and restrained, getting one hour’s exercise a day. Can you correct a prolific serial killer? Would anyone want a monster rehabilitated? Is this really how it will end for Dexter…?
DEXTER IS DEAD : THE BLURB ON THE BACK OF THE BOOK JACKET