Senseless by Ronald Malfi

Book Review

Elloise Hopkins

As a teenager, Detective William Renney survived a snakebite, which gave him a healthy respect for the desert and its non-human inhabitants. Hot desert sun, and a dead body along the LA County line. Two suspects in handcuffs. Ambulance and police waiting for him. And it was specifically him they requested work this case, so Bill has to wonder why that is. When he sees the corpse and the very specific mutilations it has suffered, he understands.

One year before, Bill worked the Melissa Jean Andressen case, and he knows better than any what happened to her murderer. But now there is a new body, Gina Fortunado, and the Chief M.E. confirms not just stark similarities with the Andressen case, but also clear differences between the two. Bill has to re-visit the original murder, her family and his suspects, in his pursuit of the truth.

Maureen Park finds herself fussing over every detail at her engagement party, much to the caterers’ annoyance. Her fiancé, Greg Dawson, is taking every opportunity (of course) to pump his guests, Hollywood high-hitters, for funds for his new movie. Maureen is anxious, still uncomfortable in his world, and now the unexpected arrival of Greg’s son will snare Maureen in another level of unsettling confrontations.

Toby Kampen has been living as a Human Fly since he left his mother’s house. His life has been his own, but perhaps it is time for him to venture out into the world a little. He meets a woman with vampire teeth, and she can only tease and evade him for so long. Toby will wait for her as long as it takes.

Senseless is billed as horror noir, but the word horror is possibly misleading there. It is highly reminiscent of 1940s psychological movie thrillers, evoking that detective noir tension with a minimal horror backdrop. Old Hollywood runs through the three narrative threads as they promise eventual overlap and resolution.

We follow Renney’s frustrating search for a killer across two time periods, one the original murder shortly after his own wife’s death, the second in present time, and the apparent copycat murder. Then there is Maureen and her new life in Hollywood, where unbeknownst to those around her, she desperately seeks to bury her past, and finds her present very much unsettled by the appearance of her fiancé’s son. Meanwhile, Toby begins to emerge from his reclusive life, tempted by a beautiful woman with sharp teeth and sharp humour.

This is such a well-crafted, slow-burning tale, with each thread of the story being tantalisingly unwrapped as events, both in the past and present, move forward and converge. Each of our main characters is written in the first person, so we are granted an insight into just how dysfunctional each of them is, adding another layer of complexity and possibility to the ‘whodunnit’. Senseless keeps the reader guessing, and the pages turning, to the last. Captivating and unique.