The Shining Girls

It's the 1990's and Kirby Mizrachi, a survivor of a brutal attack, is trying to close in on her unknown assailant with the help of an ex-homicide reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times, Dan Velasquez. What they don't realize is their suspect is time-travelling serial killer Harper Curtis who is somewhere in Chicago, sometime between his world of 1930 and now.

It's an impossible mystery and I was hooked with the notion of how author Lauren Beukes was going to resolve this for the reader. What hope does Kirby have while Harper traipses through the timeline viciously murdering a remarkably diverse list of “shining girls” including a black welder at the Chicago Bridge & Iron Company in 1943, a Korean social worker in 1993 and transexual Lucas Ziegenfeus (Alice) working a travelling carnival. Harper leaves anachronistic tokens by his victims, but considering the thousands of unsolved cases spanning a near century they hardly seems like viable signposts. We're talking some pretty impossible odds here against a foe with your entire timeline at his disposal.

This is gruesome and horrifying, veering well into horror but I was riveted. I hesitate to call spending time with a perversely motivated, brutally vicious serial killer a beach read but it was the thoroughly engaging thriller that I needed as I lounged by the pool not thinking of work.