She looks angelic. Appearances can be deceptive. This is South African author Lauren Beukes, and she's written a brilliant but brutal sci-fi thriller about a time-travelling serial killer. It should be the book of the summer.

A serial killer who can pop up anywhere is a very bad thing. Yes, indeed. It's called The Shining Girls and was the title of the 2011 Frankfurt book fair, signed by HarperCollins for a reputed six-figure sum after a heated five-way auction. Lauren isn't a debut novelist – she won the Arthur C Clark Award in 2011 for dark-hued urban fantasy Zoo City – but this should be the one that makes her.

Why's it so special? First, the concept. Harper is a 1930s drifter-turned-murderer who finds himself able to jump through time, making him all but impossible to catch. It also has a refreshingly ornery heroine in Kirby, the only girl to have survived the killer's knife. And, crucially, it's the girls' stories that are being told – not Harper's.

Sounds interesting. It is. By placing the victims centre stage, Beukes celebrates each girl's life and transforms a genre that often seems sickly sensationalist.

Are all her other books so unusual? Absolutely. The Shining Girls is Beukes' third novel. Her first book, the cyberpunk Moxyland, took on corporate branding in a tense, claustrophobic tale of technology run rampant.

So what's she working on next? Broken Monsters, which is a "Stephen King meets Jennifer Egan" type tale set in Detroit. A Zoo City film is in development.

She says: "The auction for The Shining Girls was terrifying – like being on a literary dating-game show, with all these editors phoning and telling me they wanted the book."

We say: Forget Gone Girl; now it's all about The Shining Girls.

The Shining Girls is published by HarperCollins on 9 May, £12.99