Lee's novel features two narrative threads. In the first, an aging archaeologist uncovers a vault in central Florida in 1995. The discovery suggests that the Ponoye Indian tribe incarnated a demon over 10,000 years ago. In the second thread, Clare Prentiss, a former Air Force lieutenant dishonorably discharged for accusing a colonel's deformed son of rape, accepts a job as head security guard at Fort Alachua Park, a nature reserve that's home to the military's most secret cancer research clinic. She takes the position after circumstance forced her to live on the street (if it sounds too good to be true, Clare, it is). Clare arrives at the fort, and mysteries stack up soon after pages and pages of introduction to her newfound life, clearly the biggest lull in Lee's story. The curiosities grow in number and strangeness: Clare hears various reasons for the disappearance of the previous security crew; the new crew experiences insatiable sexual desire; mutated roaches, snakes, and frogs appear; a monster stalks local math heads who want to rob the clinic of narcotics.  Eventually, the puzzle comes together in the last ninety pages, culminating in a final encounter with the madman behind it all.

As I've already suggested, a contrived plot is the main flaw in Lee's novel. And nowhere do we see this breakdown more than in the book's last three chapters and epilogue, where Lee employs convenient plot devices and unsurprising techniques. For example, Clare stumbles upon a missing videotape containing one third of the answer to the problems facing Fort Alachua, and she does so in tick-tock fashion right when the story needs a twist or a way out of itself. In addition, Lee uses a red herring so transparent I would spoil nothing in telling you who it is, but I won't. Finally, and most unfortunately, Lee employs a surprise ending to tie in the two narrative threads; this turn of events ruins what is the most intriguing storyline, the discovery of the dismembered Ponoye corpses. Lee's O'Henry efforts represent a humdrum attempt to introduce conspiracy. Reading Monstrosity, I envisioned Lee inserting plot points like a mathematician might plug numbers into the Pythagorean theorem. 

While the contrivances diminish what hopes to be an entertaining story, the prose sometimes works to make it tolerable. There are moments in which the writing succeeds in the same manner as a B-side horror movie conscious of how bad it is. For example, Lee writes, "Cross-eyed and tongue sticking out, Caleb stared right back at her--Caleb's severed head that is." The decapitated head combines with Lee's style to create a moment both entertaining and ridiculous. Other examples of Lee's morbid humor appear, but they are seldom. Their infrequency does little to make Monstrosity worth reading. In fact, between these instances of wicked comedy, Lee writes with an intensity that provides little reaction either to the gore he throws at us or to the incessant cases of rape and sexual indulgence.