Synopsis:
What do you see…? When the mutilated body of a young woman is discovered in the desert on the outskirts of Los Angeles, the detective assigned to the case can’t deny the similarities between this murder and one that occurred a year prior. Media outlets are quick to surmise this is the work of a budding serial killer, but Detective Bill Renney is struggling with an altogether different a secret that keeps him tethered to the husband of the first victim.
What do you hear…? Maureen Park, newly engaged to Hollywood producer Greg Dawson, finds her engagement party crashed by the arrival of Landon, Greg’s son. A darkly unsettling young man, Landon invades Maureen’s new existence, and the longer he stays, the more convinced she becomes that he may have something to do with the recent murder in the high desert.
What do you feel…? Toby Kampen, the self-proclaimed Human Fly, begins an obsession over a woman who is unlike anyone he has ever met. A woman with rattlesnake teeth and a penchant for biting. A woman who has trapped him in her spell. A woman who may or may not be completely human.
Review:
Story-telling with a serrated edge, Ronald Malfi’s “Senseless,” is a supernatural, noir police procedural that is as gripping as it is gritty. A macabre jigsaw, each piece jagged, that the reader futilely tries to assemble, we read from three equally anxiety-inducing perspectives. We’re left to stumble blindly in the dark, holding our breaths, whilst racking our brains and trying our hardest (in vain, of course) to put on a brave face. Compulsive, propulsive, tense and taut, with passages that oscillate between stomach-shrivelling gore and legato, fever-dreamish surrealism, Malfi continues to raise the bar. Thank you to Titan Books for my ARC, this one releases on April 15th.
Maureen is freshly engaged to Hollywood producer Greg, and what better way to celebrate than with a glamorous party at their stunning LA home? The glittering soirée takes a turn however, when Greg’s almost-estranged son, Landon, joins the festivities. Fresh off a dad-funded tour of Europe, Landon’s arrival is met with polite smiles and palpable unease. Maureen has never met him before, but beyond the inevitable awkwardness there’s something about Landon that feels plain wrong. Toby Kampen meets a vampire at a club, and, enchanted by her hypnotic charm, agrees to act as “The Renfield,” to her Dracula. He buys her drinks, chauffeurs her around, and is determined that he too will be turned. To top it all off, the whole of LA is talking about the murder and mutilation of Gina Fortunado, who was discovered on the outskirts, almost a year after the eerily similar and equally unfortunate death of Melissa Andressen. It seems the city has a serial killer on its hands. Yup! There’s a whole lot going on, and that’s not even the half of it.
These three strands are meticulously woven into a sticky web, one hell of a tangle, that takes a whole lot of unknotting on our part. Beautifully paced and wickedly engineered for maximum mind-fuckery, I could not put this down, a miracle considering it’s on the thicker side. (432 pages) It’s not something that grabs you- it grips, until its bloodied knuckles turn white. God damn it leaves marks. The prose is gorgeous, something I’m sure I don’t need to tell anyone who has allowed themselves to indulge in a Malfi book and bask in his writing. His words seduce, ensnare and cut, and “Senseless,” is no different in that respect. It’s another one of those books where I’m glad I’m not an annotator, lest I get some kind of repetitive strain injury from highlighting pages at a time.
Thematically, Malfi continues his long-standing, torrid love affair with secrecy. In “Small Town Horror,” and “The Narrows,” he explored how secrecy is allowed to fester in tight-knit, rural settings. LA is of course a whole other beast. This one is more alike to works like “Come With Me,” and “Bone White,” in which things are obscured and hidden within relationships, as well as of course, from us the reader. The lack of transparency, within families, between associates… in general, goes to show that nobody is exactly what they seem, and we can’t make assumptions. In Malfi’s LA, trusting anybody is a fool’s errand.
I’d be lying if I said I was even mildly surprised that Malfi’s latest is yet another banger, but this was excellent. Each revelation, each cruel gut-punch, had me reeling. He pulled the rug out from under me, only to reveal a trap door. Don’t even get me started on the monkey. Just you wait. A roller coaster through Tinseltown that’ll whip you around corners you didn’t see coming, and leave you breathless and bruised, once you’re on this ride, there’s no getting off. You’ll be glad you climbed aboard though. Don’t miss it.
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