1. The Shining Girls

By Lauren Beukes       

A man with violent psychopathic tendencies is drawn to a House of Dimensions in Depression-era Chicago.  He becomes a serial killer who can jump back and forth in time to hunt gifted girls while eluding the authorities. 

Sounds like a cool concept, which makes it such a tragedy that Beukes stinks as a writer.  I’m writing more than I should in expressing how disappointed I was in wasting my time with such mediocrity.  

First, the heroine, Kirby.  Unlikable and annoying. But she's young and cute, thus an object of attraction to the much older, jaded former crime reporter Dan (a composite of half-drawn cliches).  The attempt at chemistry between the two was cringe-inducing, mostly due to their clunky, hokey dialogue. Even the killer was not very well-drawn nor charismatic, and many chapters were devoted to his POV.  

So the plot.  The only thing the mysterious House demanded from the killer was an occasional tribute:  seek out and murder a young woman who had “the shine” – not the telepathic ability from the Stephen King novel, but a shining talent.  The House demanded that these bright stars  be snuffed out.  

Of course, Beukes never delved into the reason, which would be fine if this was a better written story.  In this case, it seemed more like a convenient omission.  In return, the House provided sanctuary for the killer and through its door, the ability to step into any year in the 20^th century (with certain limitations that I now forgot).

Despite the amount of research devoted to Depression-era Chicago, Beukes was not able to weave it seamlessly into her narrative.  I think the fact she’s from South Africa showed how she was an outsider looking in.  She was also incapabe of inhabiting her characters completely nor could she write invisibly.  As a result, I wasn't able to lose myself in the narrative like I could with Lisa Lutz’s The Passenger, for instance.  

Structurally, the novel jumped around in time and switched between the POVs of all the characters, including the victims.  It took SO long for the plot to move along, I ended up skimming over a lot of unnecessary exposition, which was supposed to contribute to mood, but failed in its attempt.  

Another frustrating factor was Dan being such a middle-aged fart.  He spent most of the bloody time not believing any of the clues Kirby had discovered until they broke into the House and saw all the supernatural shit - at the very end of the novel!  

Beukes had hit upon a cool sub-genre of supernatural crime thrillers, and because of her intriguing premises, I gave this a second go.  My first book of hers was Broken Monsters (2015) - it was also disappointing, but not as much as this one.   I found Broken Monsters to be the better book than The Shining Girls, her previous effort.  

At least I can now absolutely confirm that I do not like Beukes’ writing, and thus, this will be my last book of hers. Amen.

4. Broken Monsters

By Lauren Beukes  

Based on what I can remember a year later, something about a female detective in decaying Detroit trying to solve a series of bizarre murders where the killer fuses the bodies of street kids with animals. 

The narrative switches between POVs of characters, going into the mind of the killer as his mind gradually disintegrates...or becomes something else.  It's later revealed he’s a homeless schizo artist.  The detective also has a fraught relationship with her teenage daughter, who along with her friend attempts to lure a potential online predator.  There’s also a transplanted loser-journalist who’s trying to revive his career in Detroit after screwing up his life in NY.  He hooks up with a dreadlocked DJ in the underground arts scene and becomes a local youtube sensation making ‘ruin porn’. 

All the characters somehow converge at the end with a confrontation with the psycho-killer who was able to transcend into some supernatural dimension using his demented art as a kind of portal.  Sounds like it was a crazy ride, right?   Mmm, no.

I first heard that Beukes’ niche was supernatural crime noir, which intrigued me.  I couldn’t find Shining Girls at Dark Carnival so got this instead.  So I really wanted to like Broken Monsters but several things prevented me from enjoying it.  I did not like any of the characters and the dialogue was often hackneyed and awkward.  There were some interesting descriptions of Detroit, which provided a cool backdrop of urban decay, but knowing that Beukes hails from South Africa, it became evident that she was writing about America from an outsider’s perspective.  

Moreover, there was something off about the writing style, which was workmanlike but lacked a narrative flow and a sense of lyricism that was needed in portraying lost or hidden worlds within a decaying metropolis.  As a writer, Beukes was just not able to pull it off.