Broken Monsters

Gripping, intense gothic horror detective story.

I’ve seen this referred to as “supernatural noir,” but it’s not in any way vampirey. More like a mix of a Ruth Rendell procedural with the eerier parts of Stephen King’s Lisey’s Story. The plot is framed in funny, well-written contemporary banter, and contains a creepy edge that ramps up rapidly in the last few sections. It’s also a thoughtful take on modern online life. Beukes has masterfully deployed and brought to life the academic studies of Danah Boyd on the digital lives of teens.

Fairly decent immersion in the atmosphere of Detroit and the nuance of homicide in the digital age; overall lack of sympathetic identifiable characters (TK might be an exception) and a resolution wholly inconsistent in tone with the rest of the book.

What a stunning novel. Beukes weaves stories together that all touch at points and give a multifaceted portrait of a very messed-up Detroit. The author is South African and seems to have seen some amazing parallels between 21st century American and post-apartheid SA. One of the characters is a cop; her daughter is another; a third is a failed journalist trying to make money with social media; a fourth is a man who works at a church and makes his way by selling off items from abandoned houses; a fifth is a very crazy artist (and perhaps a sixth is his illness, which becomes more and more powerful). One of the strong themes of the novel is the way people compete for attention in a media-saturated world and how destructive it can be when false surfaces betray us. Absolutely brilliant.