honey and sting

So, I was visiting my sister yesterday, and it was a long afternoon, in the course of which first I took a nap and then she did. And while she was napping, I picked Lolita (the book) off her shelf, and started to read it, never having done so before. And oh. my. god. is that good writing, and I began to see what all the fuss was about. On or about the first page was a line I'd seen quoted before: "You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style." And there he was, the narrator of the tale, Humbert Humbert, delineating his monstrous heart, and what a monster he is, but what a *charming* monster. A monster with wit, with verve, with a fair bit of sympathy, with a fancy prose style. And, not having read more than 20 or so pages, mind you, it occured to me that this is the antecedant of Dexter; the monster we root for, the monster we love.

Has anyone else seen this connection? Is Dexter the inheritor of Nabakov's H.H.? Is there some history of appealing literary monsters I've missed? (John Gardner's Grendel comes to mind -- and yet that reads differently... more like a reversal of a certain colonialism about who gets to write the history).

Discuss.