Ronald Malfi seems to fit into the category of a “writer’s writer.” The kind of writer other writers (especially in the horror genre) will praise and recommend when they are asked who everybody should be reading. I’ve jumped on that bandwagon over the past few years so I was very excited to get a review copy of Senseless his crime-horror novel for 2024. Senseless is a murder mystery told across three storylines with some potentially supernatural elements. A year prior to the start of the novel, Alan Andressen’s wife was brutally murdered and mutilated. Detective Bill Renney was the detective assigned to the case so when a victim appears a year later mutilated in the exact same fashion (if with a bit less precision), Renney is on the case again.
A second storyline follows writer Maureen Park whose pending marriage to film producer Greg Dawson is thrown into chaos when Dawson’s son Landon returns from Europe. As it so happens, Dawson produces horror movies and is in the process of getting a new film off the ground. The third storyline follows a young man who thinks of himself as a human fly and becomes entranced by a woman who he believes to be a vampire. Often when there are seemingly separate storylines, readers expect the storylines to connect and converge. What Malfi does to intertwine these three storylines intertwine is fascinating and very unpredictable.
However, there’s a fourth storyline, sort of. After Malfi introduces the three storylines, he takes a step back a year earlier than the time we initially meet the characters and tells the story of Andressen’s wife’s murder and Renney’s work on the case. This investment in the character of Renney sets him largely as the main character. He possesses many traits familiar to readers of crime fiction but he still feels quite fresh to me: grizzled veteran, smoker, jaded, and dealing with his own tragedy – Renney’s wife has recently passed away. As a result, he’s putting all of himself (possibly too much of himself) into Andressen’s case. As oft happens in these crime stories, the detective and the victim’s survivor become close, which of course leads to things that maybe wouldn’t ordinarily happen, but so wonderfully happen in the novel. The relationship bordering on friendship between Andressen and Renney is potent and provides a strong backbone for the story.
The storyline featuring Maureen was quite unpredictable and the wild card that Landon represents to Maureen’s relationship with Greg is fascinating. I thought it was going to go in one direction, but as Maureen learned more about Landon, more about Greg, and a potential connection to the murders, I had the rug pulled from under me. Especially as Maureen’s time with Greg and Landon reached an unpredictable, crazy-bananas climax.
Then there’s the Toby storyline. I’ll admit I wasn’t having too much patience for this character at the outset. It felt like an unconnected distraction from the soft bromance developing between Renney and Andressen and even the devolving relationship between Maureen and Greg. As this is the fourth novel I’ve read by Ronald Malfi, I should have trusted him more because it ties into the other two storylines exquisitely. Toby becomes a critical pillar of the story, but to hint at where I feel resonance with his storyline to another story might be a spoiler. Suffice it to say, Toby is an idiosyncratic, well-drawn character.
While I blew through the final third of the novel rather quickly, I paused a couple of times to re-read some passages and refer back to earlier events to make sure I didn’t skip over anything. Senseless is a gripping novel, even some of the early Toby scenes where I didn’t feel quite the urgency I did with the Renney and Maureen storylines pulled me in quite strongly. If three storylines exist, there’s a good chance one of those will not connect quite as strongly as the other two. That’s how I felt about the Toby storyline. It wasn’t bad, but I connected more with Maureen and far, far more strongly with Renney.
The way Malfi leaves certain story elements open for interpretation, the way facts/clues are laid out but a final analysis is not explicitly delivered by the story or the characters reminds me of Paul Tremblay’s novels in the best possible way. That kind of “dialogue” between writer and reader serves to create a much more intimate, immersive, and rewarding reading experience. Malfi managed to pull off that trick balanced clues in some of the previous novels I’ve read by him, but I think Senseless is the best example of this trick. It is a novel that continues to sit in my mind as I try to piece together what I think happened based on the points and clues Malfi presented throughout.
2025 has been an extremely strong year for horror fiction and Ronald Malfi’s Senseless is another reason why.
Highly recommended.
© 2025 Rob H. Bedford
Trade Paperback | 432 Pages
April 2025 | Titan Books
https://ronaldmalfi.com/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Titan Books
