A high concept in a book or a film is more likely to make me leery than excited, but there's no denying that when a talented writer gets hold of one and turns it upside down and inside out out it's a real thrill and a privilege to behold. Lauren Beukes has the high concept and the talent and thus we get Shining Girls, about a killer who stalks his victims through time and the girl who got away and devotes her life to hunting a man who does the impossible.

The exact mechanism whereby Harper Curtis departs from Chicago in 1931 to spread horror and grief across a century is left unexplained, but Beukes constructs an intricate ingenious tale around his depradations and his madness and the madness of time travel and the efforts of spiky and hard-edged Kirby Mazrachi to prove her killer has killed before and will kill again with evidence that is either contradictory or impossible. But Harper thinks she's dead, and when he discovers the truth, how will she hide from an impossible killer?

Excellent thriller, skillfully constructed, thoroughly researched filled with distinctive voices and mounting suspense.