Author Jeff Lindsay says goodbye to serial killer Dexter

FILE - In this Dec. 12, 2006 file photo, author Jeff Lindsay poses next to a poster from Showtime series "Dexter" at his home in Cape Coral, Fla. The eighth and final novel in the Dexter series, “Dexter Is Dead,” was published on July 7. Lindsay said he has mixed feelings about leaving a popular character and a successful book series behind. (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez, File) FILE - In this Dec. 12, 2006 file photo, author Jeff Lindsay poses next to a poster from Showtime series "Dexter" at his home in Cape Coral, Fla. The eighth and final novel in the Dexter series, “Dexter Is Dead,” was published on July 7. Lindsay said he has mixed feelings about leaving a popular character and a successful book series behind. (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez, File)

By Associated Press July 14, 2015 4 min read

MIAMI (AP) – Spoiler alert: Book Dexter does not become a lumberjack.

The eighth and final novel in the Dexter series, “Dexter Is Dead,” now in bookstores, picks up from the end of the previous book, with the titular vigilante serial killer under arrest and facing a murder charge – ironically for a crime he didn’t actually commit.

“I always knew that someday the wheels would come off,” author Jeff Lindsay said.

Starting with the 2004 novel “Darkly Dreaming Dexter,” the series follows the exploits of Dexter Morgan, a blood splatter analyst with the Miami-Dade Police Department. Following a code developed by his adoptive father – a police officer – to only kill other killers, Dexter balances a public life of work, friends and family with his not-so-public, homicidal pastime. But now Dexter’s story is coming to a climatic conclusion.

“I had all these wonderful, outrageous ideas for how it would happen, and I didn’t end up using any of them, which I guess is par for the course,” Lindsay said. “Your first idea, the one that gets you going, is never the one you end up with.”