Broken Monsters
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3.8 • 112 Ratings
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
A criminal mastermind creates violent tableaus in abandoned Detroit warehouses in Lauren Beukes's genre-bending novel of suspense.
Detective Gabriella Versado has seen a lot of bodies. But this one is unique even by Detroit's standards: half boy, half deer, somehow fused together. As stranger and more disturbing bodies are discovered, how can the city hold on to a reality that is already tearing at its seams?
If you're Detective Versado's geeky teenage daughter, Layla, you commence a dangerous flirtation with a potential predator online. If you're desperate freelance journalist Jonno, you do whatever it takes to get the exclusive on a horrific story. If you're Thomas Keen, known on the street as TK, you'll do what you can to keep your homeless family safe -- and find the monster who is possessed by the dream of violently remaking the world.
If Lauren Beukes's internationally bestselling The Shining Girls was a time-jumping thrill ride through the past, her Broken Monsters is a genre-redefining thriller about broken cities, broken dreams, and broken people trying to put themselves back together again.
"Scary as hell and hypnotic. I couldn't put it down...I'd grab it if I were you." -- Stephen King
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in present-day Detroit, Beukes's novel of suspense successfully combines horror, detection, and a depressing examination of urban decay. In a bizarre murder, an 11-year-old boy has been cut in two, his upper body grafted onto the lower half of a deer. The scar of a wound in the child's armpit allows Det. Gabriella Versado to identify him as Daveyton Lafonte, who survived a "stray bullet from a gang war" at age six. Versado is the prototypical good cop working in an impossible situation a city so overwhelmed by crime that most of her job consists of handing out "empty warnings." As the killer continues to slaughter and mutilate in terrifying ways, the investigation draws in an immature and narcissistic reporter, Jonno Haim, who seeks exposure above all else. As she did in 2013's The Shining Girls, Beukes puts a fresh, imaginative spin on the trope of the serial killer. Five-city author tour.
Customer Reviews
Not a bit scary.
Many great reviews. Commentary on how other writers found it spectacular.
A slow burn that leads to an ending that falls flat. The ending would have benefited from going deeper and exploring what was happening. Just when you think the scene is going to get even more bizarre and you think the nightmare is going to explode; it ends with a bullet.
A good read but the ending is weak.
Full Bodied-Bull Book!
I just finished this epic thriller...I woke up from a three break, sleep...just to read more. I think this is my third novel this weekend. Stunning, captivating, thrilling, google-searching inducing, just all around fantastic read!
Great potential, totally squandered
This book is an easy read for your morning/evening commute. It doesn't require a lot of intellectual commitment and is reasonably entertaining in small commuter bites. Unfortunately you will be severely disappointed by the ending which is a best a punt by an author who had no idea how to finish an otherwise entertaining "dime store paperback." In the end you will come away totally disappointed in an otherwise engrossing author.