50 pages • 1 hour read
Darkly Dreaming Dexter
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Background
Historical Context: Miami’s Evolution From Colonized Settlement to Modern Metropolis
Miami, Florida, is a multiethnic metropolis with a long, rich history that has inspired countless works of fiction. It was first inhabited by the Tequesta Nation between 500 and 600 BCE, then became a Spanish settlement during the years following colonization. The area surrounding Miami became part of the United States in 1821, and the modern city of Miami was founded by affluent citrus grower Julia Tuttle in 1896.
Although Miami was always diverse and hosted a large population of Caribbean immigrants even during its early years, it was Fidel Castro’s rise to power that made Miami the majority-Hispanic city that it is today. Wealthy and middle-class Cubans whose assets and property were seized by the communist regime flooded into South Florida, and the city grew exponentially. Other immigrants from greater Latin America began to flock to Miami, and it became a key site of international banking, finance, and culture. By the 1980s, however, the city had a new reputation as the most dangerous city in the United States. It had become the capital of the decade’s violent drug wars, partly because of its proximity to miles of unguarded coastline and its cultural and financial connections to countries like Colombia, whose shadow economy was fueled by cocaine and marijuana production.
Prominent narcotraffickers plagued the city with their bloody gun battles, and countless innocent bystanders were caught in the crossfire. However, Miami was also the site of other conflicts and clashes. Its fraught racial and class divisions exploded in 1980 when Miami police officers killed an unarmed, innocent man named Arthur McDuffie on his way home from work. Riots raged for days and destroyed large swaths of Overtown and Liberty City, two of Miami’s majority-Black neighborhoods. Also in 1980, Castro temporarily loosened emigration restrictions, and the resulting wave of mass migration out of Cuba, now known as the Mariel Boatlift, caused another influx of Cubans who resettled in Miami. This group was not as welcomed by locals as were 1960s-era émigrés. Castro publicly stated that he was “emptying his prisons” and sending criminals along with law-abiding Cubans, and Miamians (even Cuban Americans) were afraid that these new immigrants would strain resources and cause an uptick in crime.
Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter series takes place after Miami’s heyday as a national hotspot for criminal activity, but it is still part of the broader body of crime fiction set in and around Miami. Its multiethnic cast of characters includes Cuban officers like Angel Batista and Lieutenant LaGuerta. In depicting first- and second-generation Cuban immigrants in positions of prestige and power, the series paints an accurate portrait of life in the city and pays homage to the Cuban community that helped propel Miami’s political and financial growth. Each novel and season of the television show features different cases and killers, but they are all representative of Miami’s complex criminal underworld.
Genre Context: Miami Crime Thrillers in Print and on Film
South Florida had an established literary scene well before the 1980s. Renowned author Ernest Hemingway had made South Florida and the adjacent Florida Keys his home in the 1920s. In the 1940s, environmental writer Marjorie Stoneman Douglas garnered a strong reputation for her written defense of the Everglades when developers sought to drain and develop it. However, the 1980s saw a new generation of authors who were interested in the city’s gritty notoriety. Their novels focused on crime and criminality, and cemented Miami’s fraught reputation as one of America’s most violent cities.
Carl Hiaasen is one of the best-known authors of this generation. Originally a journalist for the Miami Herald, Hiaasen crafted a series of humor-tinged crime novels that begin with Tourist Season (1986). Set in South Florida, the novels depict criminals of all kinds and engage with themes relating to nature and the environment, the impact of drug wars on the local culture and economy, tourism in Miami and the Florida Keys, and regional politics. Hiaasen is also a passionate environmental advocate, and his works are particularly attuned to the way public policy adversely impacts the environment. He is a prolific writer who continues to write popular books, and his novel Bad Monkey (2013) was turned into a television series starring Vince Vaughan in 2024.
Elmore Leonard, who is best known for his novel-turned-film Get Shorty (1990) and is not a South Florida native, wrote noteworthy crime novels set in South Florida, including La Brava (1983), which is set in South Beach. Although South Beach is now a tourist destination and celebrity playground, in the 1980s, it was a seedy neighborhood in decline. Leonard’s novel makes use of the area’s gritty reputation and features a complex scam involving a local cop, a Cuban national, and a former movie star. His novel Rum Punch (1992), also set in South Florida, was turned into the box-office hit Jackie Brown. Dave Barry is one of the newer writers in the South Florida crime novel scene. Like Hiaasen, Barry uses humor in his novels and explores South Florida’s complex cultural tapestry through the lens of its criminal underworld. His novel Big Trouble (1999), which features a wide cast of characters, including locals, Miami police officers, and out-of-town killers for hire, was turned into a film in 2002.
However, the best-known Miami crime thrillers are not books but films. The 1980s series Miami Vice, which ran from 1984 to 1990, features detectives Crockett and Tubbs as they investigate drug traffickers and local, small-time criminals alike. It was hugely popular and helped cement Miami’s reputation as the “drug capital” of Latin America. Scarface (1983) tells the story of Tony Montana, a Cuban refugee who moves to Miami as part of Castro’s Mariel Boatlift and rises to prominence in the local drug trade. Like Miami Vice, it capitalized on 1980s-era violence and used historical events to paint a picture of a city plagued by violence.
Darkly Dreaming Dexter features neighborhoods and key geographic details that showcase the author’s deep knowledge of his home city. The Tamiami Slasher chooses his victims from among the many sex workers who operate out of seedy motels on one of Miami’s largest arterial streets, the Tamiami Trail, which runs through the city, eventually becoming Eighth Street (Calle Ocho), the main thoroughfare through Little Havana, one of Miami’s most noteworthy Cuban neighborhoods. One of Dexter’s kills happens on the secluded, rural Card Sound Road that runs southeast out of the city, connecting central Miami to Key Largo. The area has been the site of international and domestic criminal activity, and Lindsay’s use of this setting speaks to both literary and local history. Additionally, Dexter’s mother’s position within the Miami drug trade further grounds this novel within the broader tradition of Miami crime fiction, harkening back to the subgenre’s first generation of books and films.
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