528 pages
English language
Published Sept. 10, 2014 by HarperCollins, Harper, HarperCollins Publishers.
His wildest dreams are your worst nightmare ... From Arthur C Clarke award-winning author Lauren Beukes comes a terrifying yet compulsive new thriller. In the city that's become a symbol for the death of the American dream, a nightmare killer is unravelling reality. Detective Gabi Versado no longer believes in justice. She's seen too much stupidity, corruption and just plain badness. But never anything like this. And now it's bleeding into her life. He was a broken man. The dreams which once fueled his ambition have curdled inside him - dreams of recognition, love and family. But now he has new dreams - dreams of flesh and bone made monstrously beautiful. Detroit is the decaying corpse of the American Dream. Motor-city. Murder-city. Now a killer with the touch of an artist is turning it into the worst kind of nightmare ...
His wildest dreams are your worst nightmare ... From Arthur C Clarke award-winning author Lauren Beukes comes a terrifying yet compulsive new thriller. In the city that's become a symbol for the death of the American dream, a nightmare killer is unravelling reality. Detective Gabi Versado no longer believes in justice. She's seen too much stupidity, corruption and just plain badness. But never anything like this. And now it's bleeding into her life. He was a broken man. The dreams which once fueled his ambition have curdled inside him - dreams of recognition, love and family. But now he has new dreams - dreams of flesh and bone made monstrously beautiful. Detroit is the decaying corpse of the American Dream. Motor-city. Murder-city. Now a killer with the touch of an artist is turning it into the worst kind of nightmare ...
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.
Don’t make the mistake of judging Broken Monsters on the first few chapters. It starts off like any other serial killer thriller and you may start to wonder if Lauren Beukes has turned her pen to vanilla crime fiction. There a single parent detective, a down on his luck journalist and a group of people on the edges of society. However it’s one of those books that just gets better and better as the story unfolds. Keep turning the pages to reveal a serial killer yarn intertwined with social commentary on the internet age against a backdrop of urban decay.
Where The Shining Girls was firmly rooted in the past, Broken Monsters is very much in the now. Lauren writes modern life so well with so many observations that make you think or nod in agreement. Both the journalist and the artists struggle with the quest for originality; everything has …
Don’t make the mistake of judging Broken Monsters on the first few chapters. It starts off like any other serial killer thriller and you may start to wonder if Lauren Beukes has turned her pen to vanilla crime fiction. There a single parent detective, a down on his luck journalist and a group of people on the edges of society. However it’s one of those books that just gets better and better as the story unfolds. Keep turning the pages to reveal a serial killer yarn intertwined with social commentary on the internet age against a backdrop of urban decay.
Where The Shining Girls was firmly rooted in the past, Broken Monsters is very much in the now. Lauren writes modern life so well with so many observations that make you think or nod in agreement. Both the journalist and the artists struggle with the quest for originality; everything has been done before and everyone can have an audience via digital media. How do you stand out? How do you make a living? There’s comments on everything from self-publishing and cyber bullying to dwindling attention spans and competition for audience.
he book can probably be read in two ways. It’s an engaging thriller that gets seriously creepy in places. I got a bit freaked out reading it late at night with the windows open. On the other hand, there’s a metaphor within the pages; a message about how we live our digital lives. Something that if you spend any significant amount of time on social media, you will no doubt recognise.
Review copy provided by publisher.
