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 scenario: 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.
I think I’ll always be chasing the high I get watching two movies: Seven and The Silence of the Lambs. I think those will forever be the two most perfect examples of how well crime & horror can work together.
Up front I’ll say that I enjoyed Ronald Malfi’s SENSELESS & I think if anyone is looking for a book that blends crime/thriller aspects with horror, this book will scratch that itch. That said, this is the second Malfi book I’ve read (I had previously read COME WITH ME) and I’m hesitant to continue reading his work. I do have a copy of SMALL TOWN HORROR & had my sights set on that as a summer read, so I may give it a whirl, at which point I’ll decide if he’s an author I totally vibe with. I’ll get into the reasons why I’m on the fence about him, probably towards the end of the review.
This is one of those books where it’s hard to see how the three different POVs connect until you finish the book. So, narratively, it all comes together in the end. But there were times where I felt a bit frustrated by this aspect, with particular regard to one of the POVs.
Bill Renney was my favorite of the three POVs and so it was easy for me to think of him as the main character. He’s your classic grizzled, chain smoking Los Angeles homicide detective, world-weary yet kind. He’s also grieving the somewhat recent loss of his wife, and possibly even seeing her ghost from time to time. We bounce back and forth between two timelines here, with Renney investigating the grisly murders of two women. The cases seem like they could be connected, but well…there’s a million complicated reasons why they also may not be connected. As a police procedural/detective novel, I think SENSLESS is really solid. I would have enjoyed this book quite a bit more had Renney’s been the only POV.
We’ve also got Maureen, a novelist who is recently engaged to a Hollywood producer, Greg. Problems begin to arise in Maureen’s life in the shape of Landon, Greg’s adult son from a previous marriage. Landon comes off as an entitled rich kid, with a wicked mean streak & he is intent on making Maureen feel deeply uncomfortable & unwelcome. Soon enough, Maureen begins to suspect that Landon is harboring some really sinister secrets.
And then there’s Toby, who thinks of himself as a Human Fly. Toby’s POV was the one that just grated on me most. He’s presented as someone suffering from extreme forms of mental illness & I’m not sure this was handled all that deftly. Also, Toby’s POV doesn’t really connect with the rest of the story until extremely late in the novel, so it felt very disconnected and frustrating to me.
So after I read COME WITH ME, I wasn’t sure I would bother with any more of Malfi’s work. I was ok with that book in general, though I didn’t love it. But what bothered me most were a handful of scenes that were just wildly fatphobic. Which is just something that I’ve kind of tuned myself into seeing in the books I read, and COME WITH ME had some really egregious examples. So yeah, I was hesitant to read SENSELESS but was hoping for a different outcome. But it’s there, I’m not gonna lie. It’s subtle & of course, I was looking for it. But there’s just a way Malfi has of drilling down on a character’s size that gets to me. At one point in SENSELESS, he uses the phrase “meaty paws” twice inside of one or two short paragraphs. To me, that’s just bad writing on multiple levels. And then things like chair cushions “wheezing” when certain characters sit down, stuff like that. It’s one thing to identify a character as fat. That’s fine, go ahead and do it. But it’s this weird fixation with their “meaty paws” or like, people “hauling” themselves out of vehicles and stuff. I don’t know, YMMV, but like I said, I’m going to give Malfi one more try (which is more than I would ordinarily give an author, I just know how fond of his books a lot of horror people are..) and then move on.
Obviously, my gripe took up the biggest section of this review & I’m not sorry about it. That said, I don’t expect that aspect of the book to necessarily bother everyone the way it bothered me, I’m just giving my perspective.
I think ultimately if you’re looking for a pretty gnarly serial killer novel, with some ambiguously supernatural elements, this is worth a look. The book skews way more heavily towards the crime/thriller side of things, but there are for sure some very gruesome moments/descriptions, fair warning.
So something of a mixed bag for me, but I’m still glad to have read it. Thanks to Titan for sending this one my way!
Grimdark Dad 