Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes
Published by HarperCollins
Ebook
Published 31 July 2014
529 pages
Owned
WHAT’S IT’S ABOUT
In the city that’s become a symbol for the death of the American dream; a nightmare killer is unravelling reality. The new thriller from Lauren Beukes, author of The Shining Girls.
Detective Gabi Versado has hunted down many monsters during her eight years in Homicide. She’s seen stupidity, corruption and just plain badness. But she’s never seen anything like this.
Clayton Broom is a failed artist, and a broken man. Life destroyed his plans, so he’s found new dreams – of flesh and bone made disturbingly, beautifully real.
Detroit is the decaying corpse of the American Dream. Motor-city. Murder-city. And home to a killer opening doors into the dark heart of humanity.
A killer who wants to make you whole again…
OPENING
I dreamed about a boy with springs for feet so he could jump high. So high I couldn’t catch him. But I did catch him. But then he wouldn’t get up again.
WHAT I THOUGHT
I adored The Shining Girls so had high hopes for Broken Monsters. The book lived up to my expectations – for the most part. The only thing about Broken Monsters that didn’t work for me was the whole magic realism aspect especially when it comes to the identity and motivation of the killer. I’d have preferred id the killer was just a run of the mill psychopath. The magic realism doesn’t work as well as it does with the Shining Girls. I enjoyed everything else about the novel. The novel opens with quite a gory scene that resonates the whole way through the novel which has quite a lot of gory, though necessary moments. The scene where the police make a gruesome discovery inside a potter’s kiln will give me chills for a long time. There are plenty of sub plots in Broken Monsters to hold my attention as well. My favourite is the Catfish trap laid by two teenage girls to lure a paedophile. Beukes writing is spot on and had me hooked from start to finish. The characters are all well-written and interesting as well. Broken Monsters ticks most of the boxes for me so I’d recommend it. NB: I loved the title.
RATING
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