The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

Mulholland Books, 363 pages, $16.090 (c2014)

I’m torn between admiration and confusion about “The Shining Girls,” by South African author Lauren Beukes [“Beukes, rhymes with ‘mucus’. Or, if you prefer, ‘George Lucas’. (That’s the anglicised version, of course. The correct Afrikaans pronunciation is slightly different, but I grew up English-speaking).” — from Lauren Beukes' website]

On the one hand it is a recognizable serial killer story. A man with a compulsion — we’ll discuss that further in a bit — kills young women in a violent, ritualistic way. He takes trophies; he leaves a calling card. There is a young woman who was an incomplete victim several years ago. She is trying to find her would-be killer and avenge herself. She has the help of a washed-up reporter, reassigned from the homicide beat to sports. (No offense to sports writers.) She still lives in Chicago where her attack and the murders of the other victims took place.

Beukes reveals from the start who the killer is. The murders range from the 1930s to the 1990s. And here is the first trick. The killer travels through time. I wouldn’t, however, classify this as a science fiction book, although I would attach the word “horror” on a long string to the plot. This is the confusion. Not real confusion, but just stylistic confusion. Mostly the book reads in a straightforward manner, despite all the time traveling. The women who are murdered have their own short stories. They are sweet, or sad, or angry, or hopeful.

Harper is nuts and obsessed. The device which allows him to time travel may feed that obsession. There is no doubt he was damaged to begin with, but then he is handed the ultimate murder assistant. It is a wonder there aren’t more victims. Keep in mind, though, that despite the spread in years of the murders, to Harper, it is not a matter of 60 years but months.  

Kirby, the young woman who escaped being 100 percent killed by Harper, has had her whole life jumbled and smashed by her trauma. She somehow still manages to be smart, brave — sometimes foolishly so — and intense. Her mother is ineffective in giving her solace, but that is not due to the attack; it’s just who her mother is.

Kirby is going to college in 1993 when her part of the book starts. She receives an internship at one of the Chicago newspapers. She has asked to be assigned to Dan because he knows about her case, although he doesn’t recognize her at first. Slowly, she persuades him to help uncover other murders that might have a similar modus operandi. It is difficult to assemble information because, well, the killer travels through time.

There’s no true attempt to explain how it is that Harper has a device that allows him to time travel, how the victims have been pre-selected for him, their names emblazoned on the wall of the magic house, shining and calling to him, how he knows automatically how to find his victims, both in their youth and again at the time of their deaths. It simply is. Perhaps the ending is a hint; maybe evil exists at all times, in all places, that some people are just doomed to die in a certain way.

The stories of the women slated to die are tiny gems shining in the book. These women do shine. They shine in their despair, desperation, hope, innocence, stubbornness. Never mind Harper. Never mind Dan. Maybe even never mind Kirby. They just tie all the stories together after all.