Shane Ryan Staley's Delirium Books recently released Ronald Damien Malfi's Passenger both as a 150 copy signed limited edition hardcover, and also as its September 2008 Delirium Book Club trade softcover featured selection. Malfi is known both for his short fiction, and for his four previously published novels, including The Fall Of Never and Via Dolorosa , and has a number of forthcoming novels that are under contract over the next two years.

Passenger concerns a nameless protagonist in his early thirties who suddenly awakes on a city transit bus in Baltimore, MD. He realizes that he has no memory as to his identity, where he is, where he is going, where he lives, his past, what has happened to him, or even his own name. All that he is able to discern about himself and his condition is that his hair has recently been cut very short, his threadbare clothes appear to be new, and he has a very bad headache. He has no identification or wallet and no money. Indeed, the only clue he has as to his own existence is the address, written in ink, that he finds scribbled onto the palm of his hand.

Passenger immediately becomes an almost hypnotic journey of self-discovery for the book's protagonist. Malfi treats the readers to a lyrical and compelling tour through those portions of Baltimore not normally on any tourist's itineraries. As the protagonist searches for his name and identity, we are swept up in his quest, and meet a unique and engaging set of characters, some mysterious, some wondrous, some uplifting, and others quite sad, They are as different as any random assortment of humans are likely to be, but all are similar in their being fascinating. Malfi hooks the reader within the novel's first two paragraphs and never relents.

What is so good about Passenger, is that Malfi just does not disappoint the reader. As the story unfolds, Malfi not only keeps the reader interested in the strong, appealing, and quirky characters he continues to introduce, he maintains and ever deepens the central mystery surrounding his protagonist's identity, and the ultimate reason behind his condition and his amnesia. The novel works, and works brilliantly on all levels. Any novel with a central mystery in which the resolution comes both as a genuine surprise, and yet as an inevitable outcome is a deserved success, and Passenger manages this feat in a splendidly impressive manner. Furthermore, Malfi's use of language and his power of description, is sublime. The reader truly lives and vividly experiences all that the protagonist does to an extent much greater than normal in most contemporary novels.

If there is any very small "nit-picky" criticism of this hugely rewarding novel, it would be that Malfi, on a few rare occasions, perhaps goes one or two adjectives and/or adverbs too far and gets just a little carried away in his descriptions, tending to remind one of H. P. Lovecraft's sometimes florid and overwrought descriptive excesses. However, in Malfi's case, any such arguable rare excess is, at worst, very mild and forgivable, as he always succeeds in creating a very detailed and highly atmospheric description for his readers, which is ultimately fulfilling.

Passengeris both a superb work of literature as well as a frightening examination of psychological suspense and terror. I give you all fair warning that this is one novel that is so powerfully irresistible that you will find it very difficult to put it down once you've started to read it. Congratulations to author Malfi, and thanks as well to Publisher Staley and Delirium Books for finding and releasing yet another in a very long line of superb and gripping novels for the discerning reader of quality horror.