This novel by Ronald Malfi is like a jigsaw puzzle that you find in the attic in a plain old shoe box. The pieces are there but you don’t know what the final picture will turn out to be. You start on the edges, slowly revealing the puzzle’s subject. The novel, like the puzzle, begins on the edges with the discovery of a body in the desert. It’s a woman and she’s been horribly mutilated – her eyes gouged out, her nose cut off, her ears gone, her tongue and fingers missing. The detective assigned the case, Bill Renney, finds it eerily similar to one he had the year before, another woman mutilated and found in almost the same spot in the desert. Is there a serial killer on the loose? Maybe, but there are disparities between the two deaths – the first woman’s features were removed carefully with almost surgical precision, while the current victim’s amputations were cut crudely. A copycat? Renney doubts that since details of the first woman’s death were never revealed to the public.

The narrative then shifts to an engagement party being held at the home of Hollywood producer, Greg Dawson. His bride-to-be is a novelist from Wyoming, Maureen Park. Crashing the party is Dawson’s adult son, Landon, and his stoner buddy, newly arrived from Europe. Maureen intuits there is something wrong with Landon and begins to fear him.

We then shift again to Toby, who thinks of himself as a housefly. He is a 22-year-old living in unit in a storage facility and it’s obvious that he has emotional and mental issues. 

How all these diverse characters fit together is part of the puzzle author Malfi presents to the reader as he slowly reveals how their lives intertwine leading to the final revelations related to the two murders.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It’s long and goes slowly at first as the author ratchets up the tension, revealing clues that keep the reader engaged and guessing. The final 200 pages raced by, as I was unable to put the book down. I highly recommend Senseless for lovers of horror, murder mysteries, and suspense thrillers.