Beasts of the mind

The top half of the body of a child is discovered, attached to the bottom half of an animal. With this disturbing image - human and deer fused together at the waist with medical glue - Lauren Beukes begins her fourth novel, Broken Monsters.

It's a roller-coaster ride of dark thrills, roping in a cast of misfit characters - from a tough female cop, Gabriella Versado, determined to catch the sicko loose in her city, to her teenage daughter, entwined in dangerous social media games.

Broken Monsters is set in Detroit, an industrial American city full of empty shells of factories and warehouses, inhabited by equally abandoned souls.

Beukes is brilliant at describing life on the streets, from the point of view of Tom Keen, or TK, a destitute opportunist who scavenges in the remains of evicted family homes to provide for his homeless crew.

Jonno Haim, an unmoored drifter, gives another perspective of Detroit's streets. A failed journalist with ambitions of being a writer, he searches for meaning in a new city after a break-up.

With the help of dreadlocked DJ Jen Q he gains access to the Detroit art scene with its attendant social media hype and hipster pretentiousness.

Myriad topics are covered as the characters spiral in on the killer: the dangers of social media, alienation and loneliness, violence, paedophilia, and the meaning of art. You name it - if it's a current issue, Beukes gives it a go.

Indebted to the graphic novel genre, her talent for vivid description is impressive, especially in passages about the city. As the horror unfolds, the reader pictures each terrible scene, each twisted art project (the killer is an artist, possessed by some terrible phantom - The Dream - that has taken over his psyche).

What Beukes is less successful at is the killer's psychology. While she handles the dialogue between the teenagers convincingly, she never really explains satisfactorily what happens to Clayton Broom to make him become a killer.

There's an estranged lover and a son, a car chase through the woods, an accident and road kill.

Why this series of events leads to the supernatural possession of Broom is pretty hazy.

Though thoroughly absorbed in the action, I spent much of the time while reading Broken Monsters wondering what had actually happened in those woods.

Broken Monsters is intriguing and compelling. It hurtles towards the denouement when killer comes face to face with cop. But, ultimately, I felt the story was weakened by the insubstantial explanation of the killer's motivation.