"...I was not that far off at sixteen - people really are hopeless!"
Similar to the first novel in the Dexter series, Darkly Dreaming Dexter, Dearly Devoted Dexter's early pages involve Dexter eradicating a murderer and child molester who isn't under the investigation of the Miami-Dade police department.
"...Spider-Man, Brother Bear, Finding Nemo. I wondered how many boys MacGregor had sent over the side to find Nemo. I dearly hoped that soon Nemo would find him."
"Call me unreasonable, even illogical since I generally have little use for humans, but for some reason I care about kids. And when I find someone who preys on children it is very much as if they have slipped the Dark Maitre d' twenty dollars to move to the front of the line."
Also like the first novel, most of the book focuses on a single antagonist's violent acts being investigated by the Miami-Dade police department. In the first book the victims are all female and all murdered. In the second the first victim is found alive but disfigured because of the book's main antagonist's violent acts. Subsequent victims are found, only one of them murdered, but all of them severely disfigured. Dexter cheerfully refers to them as "the Howling Vegetable of N.W. 4th Street", "yodeling potato", "musical beanbags", and "squealing pillows" due to their usually tongueless horror at the state they have been reduced to, generally limbless and with no eyelids.
A secondary antagonist in the series is Sergeant Albert Doakes. His dislike for Dexter in the first novel has turned into a suspicion of illegal actions on Dexter's part. From early on in the second book Sergeant Doakes in his spare time follows Dexter around to try to prove his suspicions accurate. He does this conspicuously with no regard for Dexter's awareness of him. However Doakes' surveillance causes Dexter to take no chances and establish a "normal routine" doing nothing that would alarm Sergeant Doakes. As part of this he spends much time with his "girlfriend" Rita, and her children Cody and Astor.
Early on a government agent named Kyle Chutsky enters the picture to aid the Miami Dade police department in capturing the elusive "Dr. Danco." It turns out that Chutsky knows of the man the police are chasing. He quickly becomes enamored of Dexter's sister Sergeant Deborah Morgan.
"There was a commercial back then. Danco presents the autoveggie. It slices, it dices...That's what we called him. Dr. Danco. He made chopped up vegetables."
Dearly Devoted Dexter is an excellent, hilarious read, and I recommend it to fans of the mystery genre.