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Broken Monsters
Author:
Beukes, Lauren
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Class:
Fiction
Age: Adult
Language: English
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LC: PR9369.4
Print Run: 50000
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ISBN-13: 9780316216821
LCCN: BD14247026
Imprint: Mulholland Books
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
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Pub Date: 09/16/2014
Availability: Out of Stock Indefinitely
List: $26.00
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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442 pages ; 25 cm
H 9.5",
W 6.5",
D 1.5",
1.51 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Brodart Sources:
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Brodart's Insight Catalog: Adult
Brodart's TOP Adult Titles
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Bibliographies:
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Booklist's Mystery Showcase
Fiction Core Collection, 18th ed.
Fiction Core Collection, 19th ed.
Fiction Core Collection, 20th ed.
Library Journal Collection Development Series
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Awards:
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Booklist Starred Reviews
Kirkus Best Books
Kirkus Starred Reviews
Library Journal Starred Reviews
Reading List Council Award
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Starred Reviews:
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Booklist
Kirkus Reviews
Library Journal
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TIPS Subjects:
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Suspense/Thriller
Occult Fiction
Mystery/Detective Fiction
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BISAC Subjects: |
FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Traditional
FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths
FICTION / Occult & Supernatural
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LC Subjects:
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Women detectives, Michigan, Detroit, Fiction
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SEARS Subjects: |
Women detectives, Detroit (Mich.), Fiction
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Reading Programs: |
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| Annotations |
| Brodart's TOP Adult Titles | 06/01/2014 |
| Deserted Detroit warehouses present a disturbing look at a monstrous new world when Detective Gabriella Versado discovers the body of a boy fused with a deer. 448pp., 50K, Auth res: Cape Town, South Africa |
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| Starred Reviews: |
| Booklist | 10/01/2014 |
| Following The Shining Girls (2013), Beukes returns with another genre-bender boasting sympathetic characters, meticulously rendered settings, an unflinchingly realistic crime scene, and a distinctly horror-fiction atmosphere. Detroit Homicide Detective Gabriella Versado is barely balancing her career and raising a teenage daughter when she's assigned the wickedly bizarre case of a boy whose body was mutilated in a grotesque sculpture: the upper half of the body fused with the hindquarters of a deer. As Versado begins due diligence by interviewing taxidermists and hunters, fame-chasing YouTube journalist Jonno hounds her for inside information on the case. Gold-hearted T. K., homeless in America's abandoned city, is haunted by the odd doorways suddenly chalked all over the city, including at Versado's crime scene. And Versado's daughter, Layla, alternatively naive and wise beyond her years, begins testing her bravery through flirtations with Detroit's dark side. As more bodies fused with animal parts appear, accompanied by the creepy chalk-door drawings, Gabi's team hunts a serial killer touched by incomprehensible evil that will lure her, Jonno, T. K., and Layla toward a masterful, surreal climax. Beukes avoids predictability by leading readers to doubt their interpretations of motives and events, blending detection and atmospheric horror to court both hard-boiled mystery and literary-horror fans. Think Peter Straub meets Karin Slaughter. Tran, Christine. 448. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2014. |
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| Kirkus Reviews | 09/01/2014 |
| A genuinely unsettling--in all the best ways--blend of suspense and the supernatural makes this a serial-killer tale like you've never seen. Set in a crumbling contemporary Detroit, Beukes' fourth novel (The Shining Girls, 2013, etc.) seamlessly alternates between the points of view of a single mother homicide detective; her 15-year-old daughter; a wannabe journalist; a homeless man; and an artist with deep-seated psychological issues. At the scene of the crime, Detective Gabriella Versado can't remember the last time she's seen something so brutal: The top half of 11-year-old Daveyton Lafonte is fused with the hind legs of a fawn in a hideous display of human taxidermy. While it's obvious that the five storylines will eventually join together, Beukes never takes the easy route, letting each character develop organically. Versado's daughter, Layla, cautiously navigates high school in the digital age; homeless scavenger Thomas "TK" Keen warily patrols the streets; Detroit transplant Jonno Haim tries to make a name for himself by chronicling first the city's art scene and then the hunt for the killer dubbed the Detroit Monster; and sculptor Clayton Broom's creations begin to take on lives of their own. Versado's dogged pursuit of the killer, under the glare of the media spotlight, is as compelling a police procedural narrative as Broom's descent into madness and the horrors of his dream world are a truly terrifying horror story. Beukes gave us a time traveling serial killer in The Shining Girls, and the monsters in her latest tale, whether they're real or imagined, will keep you up all night. 448pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2014. |
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| Library Journal | 03/01/2015 |
| Against the decaying backdrop of present-day Detroit, a series of horrific crimes appear to be the work of a twisted serial killer. But layered onto the story is a cynical look at the future of journalism and a big dollop of the supernatural. Beukes is a hugely inventive author, never afraid to borrow from whatever genre gets the job done. (LJ 7/14). Megan M. McArdle. 448p. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2015. |
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| Journal Reviews |
| BookPage | 10/21/2014 |
| If ever a book were tailor-made for a David Fincher movie adaptation (Se7en, Zodiac, etc.), it's Lauren Beukes' latest dark, genre-bending mystery. On a cool November night in Detroit, Detective Gabriella Versado comes across the strangest crime scene of her career: a dead 11-year-old boy whose lower half has been replaced by that of a deer. Their bodies have been fused together into a macabre human-animal hybrid straight out of "True Detective" or NBC's "Hannibal," and Versado believes the killer will strike again. Meanwhile, a diverse array of Detroit grifters--the unemployed writer, Jonno Haim, desperate for a story that will save his career; the homeless squatter known as TK, wracked by seizures; and the tortured artist, Clayton Broom, whose refrigerator is stuffed with secrets--begins to encounter strange things in the city at night, "when the borders are the most porous the between the worlds, and unnatural things leak out of people's heads." From faces carved into stone cairns at the city's secret beach to perfect circles of upturned chairs in church basements, something is happening in Detroit beyond the city's usual death and decay. This is a police procedural that's anything but procedural, a deft combination of otherworldly genre intrigue and the true-to-life details of a front-page homicide investigation. In short chapters that are brisk but never rushed, Beukes' prose is a masterful display of James Wood's free indirect style, embodying five distinct personalities touched by obsession, desperation and madness. Striking details--like "Detroit diamonds," what locals call the blue glass left behind from broken car windows--lend an extraordinary sense of place to a story set in one of America's darkest and most iconic cities. For many writers, reading Beukes is a sobering encounter with our own limitations, awed as we are by her immense talent and unwavering authority with words. To call Broken Monsters her masterpiece would be a disservice to both her previous and future work, but to count it among the very best books of its kind seems perfectly reasonable. Morgan, Adam. BookPageXTRA Online Review. BOOKPAGE, c2014. |
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| Library Journal Prepub Alert | 03/24/2014 |
| In another fantasy-thriller meld from Arthur C. Clarke Award recipient Beukes, who won loads of attention (and the occasional mixed review) with last year's The Shining Girls, Detroit detective Gabriella Versado is unsettled by the discovery of a body that is half-boy and half-deer. With giveaways at the San Diego Comic Con, plus a tour to Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, and New York City. 288p. LJ Prepub Alert Online Review. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2014. |
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| Publishers Weekly | 07/28/2014 |
| 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. Agent: Oli Munson, A.M. Heath (U.K.). (Sept.). 448p. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2014. |
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9780316216821,dl.it[0].title
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