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.