There is one M word that we automatically associate with the world's favorite blood-spatter analysing, part time vigilante-killing Floridian Dexter Morgan. Murder. The other, less likely suspect however, has been popping up more and more in his life since a certain incident in Dearly Devoted Dexter. Marriage. In between negotiating an outrageous price with a famous caterer, Manny Borque, maintiaining his precious disguise for all the world to see, keeping things good with Rita, always a hard task, and educating her children Astor and Cody, something is not quite right.
And as always, it takes a brutal double homicide to bring it bubbling to the surface. Two headless and badly burned bodies are found at a lake near a university and as always, it is Daring Dexter that is called to the scene. But what he sees there elicits a response that he has never felt before. Fear. Not the fear from himself for that would be a real, genuine human emotion and our Dexter is something else entirely. No, not that kind of fear but fear from something deep inside him in the deepest, darkest corner of Dexter. Fear from his unswaying sidekick, the Dark Passenger.
For so long now, Dexter has heard the soft whispers of the Dark Passenger as he went about his necessary work but now, it is in hiding. And even his usual hobbies of breaking and entering followed by a leisurely dismemberment are no longer what they used to be. Could it be? Is our favorite fun-loving sociopath really experiencing... performance anxiety? And as a new threat begins to stalk Dexter and the game, as is so often its custom with these types of characters, grows deadly, Dexter realises exactly what he is without it. No longer the Dark Avenger, stalker of the night with the Dark Passenger at his side, Dexter Morgan is for the first time in fear, for he is no longer a predator. He is the prey.