Passenger: Mystery Thriller

by Ronald Malfi

Ein Mann erwacht im Baltimore City Bus ohne jegliche Erinnerung daran, wer er ist, wohin er unterwegs ist, oder was mit ihm geschehen ist. Sein Kopf ist kahl geschoren, seine Kleidung scheint neu und auf seiner Handfläche ist eine Adresse notiert.
Er versucht das Geheimnis seiner Vergangenheit aufzudecken, doch ihn beschleicht die ungute Ahnung, dass diese nicht grundlos verborgen wurde …
Passenger ist eine eindrucksvolle Reise, in der es den Protagonist durch die finstere Straßen Baltimores führt und er auf der Suche nach seiner Identität auf viele sowohl sonderliche als auch wundervolle Charaktere trifft.

Genres: Horror, Mystery, Thriller, Fiction, Fantasy

250 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 2008

About the author

Ronald Malfi is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling, award-winning author of many novels and novellas in the horror, mystery, and thriller genres. In 2011, his novel, Floating Staircase, was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for best novel by the Horror Writers Association, and also won a gold IPPY award. In 2024, he was presented with the prestigious William G. Wilson Award for Adult Fiction by the Maryland Library Association. Perhaps his most well-received novel, Come with Me (2021), about a man who learns a dark secret about his wife after she's killed, has received stellar reviews, including a starred review from BookPage, and Publishers Weekly has said, "Malfi impresses in this taut, supernaturally tinged mystery... and sticks the landing with a powerful denouement. There’s plenty here to enjoy."

His most recent novels include Senseless (2025) and Small Town Horror (2024), both of which received favorable reviews and saw Malfi stretch his authorial voice.

Come with Me (2021) and Black Mouth (2022), tackle themes of grief and loss, and of the effects of childhood trauma and alcoholism, respectively. Both books have been critically praised, with Publishers Weekly calling Black Mouth a "standout" book of the year. These novels were followed by Ghostwritten (2022), a collection of four subtly-linked novellas about haunted books and the power of the written word. Ghostwritten received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which called the book a "wonderfully meta collection...vibrantly imagined," and that "Malfi makes reading about the perils of reading a terrifying delight."

Among his most popular works is December Park, a coming-of-age thriller set in the '90s, wherein five teenage boys take up the hunt for a child murderer in their hometown of Harting Farms, Maryland. In interviews, Malfi has expressed that this is his most autobiographical book to date. In 2015, this novel was awarded the Beverly Hills International Book Award for best suspense novel. It has been optioned several times for film.

Bone White (2017), about a man searching for his lost twin brother in a haunted Alaskan mining town, was touted as "an elegant, twisted, gripping slow-burn of a novel that burrows under the skin and nestles deep," by RT Book Reviews, and has also been optioned for television by Fox21/Disney and Amazon Studios.

His novels Little Girls (2015) and The Night Parade (2016) explore broken families forced to endure horrific and extraordinary circumstances, which has become the hallmark for Malfi's brand of intimate, lyrical horror fiction.

His earlier works, such as Via Dolorosa (2007) and Passenger (2008) explored characters with lost or confused identities, wherein Malfi experimented with the ultimate unreliable narrators. He maintained this trend in his award-winning novel, Floating Staircase (2011), which the author has suggested contains "multiple endings for the astute reader."

His more "monstery" novels, such as Snow (2010) and The Narrows (2012) still resonate with his inimitable brand of literary cadence and focus on character and story over plot. Both books were highly regarded by fans and reviewers in the genre.

A bit of a departure, Malfi published the crime drama Shamrock Alley in 2009, based on the true exploits of his own father, a former Secret Service agent. The book was optioned several times for film.

Ronald Malfi was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1977, the eldest of four children, and eventually relocated to Maryland, where he currently resides along the Chesapeake Bay.

When he's not writing, he's performing with the rock band VEER, who can be found at veerband.net and wherever you stream your music.

Visit

Reviews

[Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

An engrossing, visceral first person story that really hooks you in, and intrigues you with the need for an answer to, Who is He?
This story is written so well and has some really good passages incorporating the protagonists thoughts and feelings. The main protagonist finds himself in a dilemma that he cannot remember who he is and failing to recollect memories except a few snippets here and there and an address written down on his arm. It must be a harrowing experience this Amnesia state of mind, the story is in the similar vein as Before I got to Sleep and just and as much depth it creates a psychologically tense setting of tempo. Also this story made me recollect the Bourne identity movie where Matt Damon tries to piece together his identity, it all makes interesting reading. I am eager to read more from this talented writer as I enjoyed his writing prose, this story comes highly recommended as one to read easily available on ebook.
The excerpts below that I liked should provide a good taster of the story quality.

"The whole building is silent.
Then I am here: the third floor landing. I stand at the far end of the hall, taking in the doors of either side of the hallway and the single door at the opposite wall facing me. The oaken, musty smell f the aged wood and grime infiltrate my senses-not just my sense of smell, but all my senses, to the point where I can acutely see the oldness of the hallway in detail, can hear the floating of the stagnant dust through the motionless air and feel the weight f the oldness, all of it, like a force against my skin, pushing down. It is a wellspring of power, of overpower, the amplification tantamount to overdriven stereo speakers. It is my imbecilic, useless mind desperate to grasp at all my surroundings in an attempt to fill the void where my memory was once stored. An empty, voiceless void; a rip in space and time. Because if you can't fill it with memory, you will fill it with senses.
My memory....
How does someone forget who they are? How does someone wake up on a city bus as if fresh from the womb?
This waltz therapeutic- cut it out, I think. End the dance."

" The funny thing is I've been here before.
The funny thing is, it starts with the disremembered but, strangely enough, it starts with deja vu. The memory of the memory. It starts with the confidence of subconscious recollection. Time immemorial. looping, soundless footage projected straight into space. Dust motes spiralling dizzy in the spotlight"

"These bills have been passed through countless hands, stuffed into pocket after pocket after pocket, tipped to strippers and used to snort cocaine. These bills have touched the lives of countless people involved in countless activities. They are real, tangible. And feeling this only makes me aware of how alone I am. Utterly; completely."

"There's a million places you can sell junk. This city, man, it's built on junk, selling junk. The whole place revolves around junk being moved from one shitty location to another. Relocation, that the game. Its all the same no matter how you cut it- wether you be moving someone's junk from the curb to a junk shop, whether you be a taxicab moving junk-head people's from one part of the city to another, or whether you been taking junk straight from a needle and burying it right in your arm. That Baltimore, and that's what makes the city move-the transporting of junk. We built on it."

"I drive and let up on the accelerator as the road condenses to a single lane. Trees file by on either side. It is a long, straight stretch of blacktop, straight out to the horizon. Suddenly, i am in a painting by someone named Courbet. Suddenly, i am in the one memory I have managed to retain throughout all this...
Both feet slam on the brake. The truck tyres screech and the truck itself fishtails to the right, kicking up gravel like marbles, the stink of burning rubber overpowering the world. The truck bucks and convulses before quivering to a halt. A second later, as if in need of oxygen, I spill out of the cab and stagger, zombie-like, toward the centre of the street. The world is silent. The trees don't even appear to sway in the breeze. It is cold up here, damn cold, but my adrenaline is pumping like thunderous applause, my clothes drenched in sweat. Piano sonata 14 plays through the open door of the truck.
Standing in the centre of the roadway, I am just as lost as I have been all along. The needling has increased at the base of my skull, but there are no memories here, nothing to pick up and dust off.
Yet this place....
This place..."

[Rob Twinem · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy anything written by Ronald Malfi and this is no exception. A man wakes up on a Baltimore bus with no memory and the story therefore is a voyage of discovery as he tries to unravel the block in his life. This is best described as travelling down a dark tunnel with only a small light for company and meeting various people/characters and situations along the way. Although this may not be an original concept Mr Malfi does a wonderful job of showing the fear and mistrust prevelant within our hero and the conclusion when it occurs is both surprising and well executed.

[Bandit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Memory is a tricky thing. Especially when it comes to forgetting. In this case a complete amnesia. A man wakes up on a bus, no recollection of who he is, only clue is an address written on his palm, no possessions, no papers. He is gaunt, disoriented and all around him is gray and dirty Baltimore winter. So not exactly an uplifting Christmas story. But what a story. Malfi, using all of his considerable talent, never lets up the bleakness, Baltimore is a character here, the heavy dirty blanket upon the protagonist's shoulders as it were, as the plot relentlessly barrels down to its tragic conclusion. It's terribly depressing, but equally compelling, a one or two sitting read (if possible) just to see the ending reveal. There are many elements of suspense fiction here and it is, essentially, a mystery, but if I had to categorize this one, it's a drama, very sad one at that. Good read, though, quite an emotional wallop. Nothing supernatural this time, Malfi demonstrating his versatility as an author again, just a great story, though it's definitely not gonna win Baltimore tourism industry any business. Many thanks to my friend Bill for this one.

[Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

An engrossing, visceral first person story that really hooks you in, and intrigues you with the need for an answer to, Who is He?
This story is written so well and has some really good passages incorporating the protagonists thoughts and feelings. The main protagonist finds himself in a dilemma that he cannot remember who he is and failing to recollect memories except a few snippets here and there and an address written down on his arm. It must be a harrowing experience this Amnesia state of mind, the story is in the similar vein as Before I got to Sleep and just and as much depth it creates a psychologically tense setting of tempo. Also this story made me recollect the Bourne identity movie where Matt Damon tries to piece together his identity, it all makes interesting reading. The authors other work Snow and Ascent, I am eager to give one them a try as I enjoyed his writing prose, this story comes highly recommended as one to read easily available on ebook.
The excerpts below that I liked should provide a good taster of the story quality.

"The whole building is silent.
Then I am here: the third floor landing. I stand at the far end of the hall, taking in the doors of either side of the hallway and the single door at the opposite wall facing me. The oaken, musty smell f the aged wood and grime infiltrate my senses-not just my sense of smell, but all my senses, to the point where I can acutely see the oldness of the hallway in detail, can hear the floating of the stagnant dust through the motionless air and feel the weight f the oldness, all of it, like a force against my skin, pushing down. It is a wellspring of power, of overpower, the amplification tantamount to overdriven stereo speakers. It is my imbecilic, useless mind desperate to grasp at all my surroundings in an attempt to fill the void where my memory was once stored. An empty, voiceless void; a rip in space and time. Because if you can't fill it with memory, you will fill it with senses.
My memory....
How does someone forget who they are? How does someone wake up on a city bus as if fresh from the womb?
This waltz therapeutic- cut it out, I think. End the dance."

" The funny thing is I've been here before.
The funny thing is, it starts with the disremembered but, strangely enough, it starts with deja vu. The memory of the memory. It starts with the confidence of subconscious recollection. Time immemorial. looping, soundless footage projected straight into space. Dust motes spiralling dizzy in the spotlight"

"These bills have been passed through countless hands, stuffed into pocket after pocket after pocket, tipped to strippers and used to snort cocaine. These bills have touched the lives of countless people involved in countless activities. They are real, tangible. And feeling this only makes me aware of how alone I am. Utterly; completely."

"There's a million places you can sell junk. This city, man, it's built on junk, selling junk. The whole place revolves around junk being moved from one shitty location to another. Relocation, that the game. Its all the same no matter how you cut it- wether you be moving someone's junk from the curb to a junk shop, whether you be a taxicab moving junk-head people's from one part of the city to another, or whether you been taking junk straight from a needle and burying it right in your arm. That Baltimore, and that's what makes the city move-the transporting of junk. We built on it."

"I drive and let up on the accelerator as the road condenses to a single lane. Trees file by on either side. It is a long, straight stretch of blacktop, straight out to the horizon. Suddenly, i am in a painting by someone named Courbet. Suddenly, i am in the one memory I have managed to retain throughout all this...
Both feet slam on the brake. The truck tyres screech and the truck itself fishtails to the right, kicking up gravel like marbles, the stink of burning rubber overpowering the world. The truck bucks and convulses before quivering to a halt. A second later, as if in need of oxygen, I spill out of the cab and stagger, zombie-like, toward the centre of the street. The world is silent. The trees don't even appear to sway in the breeze. It is cold up here, damn cold, but my adrenaline is pumping like thunderous applause, my clothes drenched in sweat. Piano sonata 14 plays through the open door of the truck.
Standing in the centre of the roadway, I am just as lost as I have been all along. The needling has increased at the base of my skull, but there are no memories here, nothing to pick up and dust off.
Yet this place....
This place......"

[Jason Pettus · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

(Don't worry! I won't be revealing any spoilers today!)

As I've said here before, I have an ambiguous relationship with the literary genre known as horror; I neither love it nor hate it, neither seek it or nor ignore it. After all, I'm an avowed fan of genre work, just other ones like science-fiction a lot more; and I try to be a champion of smaller work too, from all the various small and basement presses out there, and there's certainly a lot of horror being published these days under such auspices. In fact, it's a very interesting time to be a horror writer or fan these days, because there's a whole rise right now in a smart underground new subgenre in the scene, the so-called "New Weird" tales* that have as much to do with psychological horror and setting a moody tone as they do haunted cars or possessed teenage girls or buckets of blood or whatnot. It's no more than a reflection of what a lot of the rest of the arts has been going through in the last decade as well; that as the corporate conglomerates have taken over all these publishing companies, and turned all artistic decisions into bottom-line financial ones, the only thing coming out of the major companies genre-wise anymore is either dumbed-down crap (cough cough, DaVinci Code) or the overmarketed remainder-bin latest by some tired old hack (cough cough, Stephen King, cough cough, oh, excuse me, I have something in my throat!) That drives the smart, cutting-edge stuff down to the underground level, so the theory goes, which is why you find the most interesting genre stuff these days among the small and basement presses. So the theory goes.

And that brings us to underground hero Ronald Malfi, a New Weird horror writer with a rabid cult following; he's no stranger to the CCLaP site, either, with his last book Via Dolorosa being reviewed here in 2007. And now he's got a new one, called Passenger, put out by the cutting-edge basement press Delirium; and like his previous, it's a slow-moving, beautifully written minimalist horror tale, one light on plot but heavy on tone. There's a good reason it's known as cutting-edge horror, because it's not the kind of horror tale you normally expect; and some people are simply going to love that, and others hate it, which is the chance any author takes when being cutting-edge, and they know it which is why you shouldn't really feel bad for them. Given the passion and sincerity behind what Malfi commits to the page, I'm sure he actually prefers to have a smaller but more fervent fan base for his work, with books out on smaller presses but with audience members who will lay down in front of tanks for him. It has its problems to be sure, which I'll be getting into in a bit; but in general I can say that I liked Passenger much more than its predecessor, and that Malfi is getting more and more things right with each new book he puts out.

And maybe that's because I knew a little more this time what to expect? After all, when you compare the two novels not by actual plotline but by traits and tricks and styles, they're actually quite similar; both take place in interesting cities (Baltimore in this latest case), both largely abandon a traditional three-act plot (or at least stretch a minimalist one as far as it can go), and both are more concerned with setting a spooky tone than in actually jumping out and yelling, "BOO!" In the case of Passenger, for example, our story starts with our hero coming-to in the back of a public bus, a gaunt white male who suddenly realizes that he has selective amnesia, that he can remember the generalities of life (how to talk, how to walk) but not anything about himself, his identity, where he is or what he's doing or how he got on the bus in the first place. Panicked, of course, he ends up wandering out into the Baltimore streets in a daze; eventually he notices a street address written on his hand, goes over, and finds a barely furnished apartment waiting for him, and absolutely no clues whatsoever about who he might be.

And thus do we officially fall down the 228-page rabbit-hole of Malfi's odd universe, as we follow our many-named hero into his random and arbitrary explorations of the city and his life, falling in with one crowd or another sometimes simply by walking by and having them grab him. That for example is how he ends up falling in with a group of severe-lower-class black musicians and odd-jobbers over on the poor side of the city, after discovering accidentally one night at a bar that he's actually a virtuoso piano player, and a veritable walking encyclopedia of popular songs. And that's how he also ends up at a run-down church, where he has a bizarre afternoon with a cancer-stricken nun; and that's how he also ends up in a whole host of other odd and menacing and just plain strange situations, all of them filled with unique side characters and strong, assured dialogue.

But nothing really happens for most of Passenger, see, which is bound to drive many three-act purists crazy; it's not until the very last 20 pages that our perpetually non-informed hero finally figures out his identity and the reason behind his amnesia, all of it coming at once instead of a slow realization over the first 200 pages. No, instead the first 200 pages are used almost exclusively to set a mood, to wallow in description and language, to enjoy the mere establishment of an odd and near-violent fictional world that is almost just like our own but not quite. Malfi's Baltimore is one of dank, subterranean nightclubs; Lynchian urban bachelor pads with garish shag carpeting and disco balls; late-night sweats and aimless bus rides and frantic couplings with near-strangers just for a sense of closeness. In fact, speaking of David Lynch, instead of another writer, what this novel actually most reminds me of is that filmmaker's long-time cinematographer, Frederick Elmes, the visual genius behind the look and feel of Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Wild At Heart , Ang Lee's Hulk, Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers, and a whole lot more. Malfi's writing reminds me of warmly-colored, dark, spooky back hallways, full of red velvet curtains dramatically lit, a certain sense of disturbing quiet and industrial background noise infusing the entire scene.

That's the real reason to read Malfi's work, definitely this book in particular, is to really celebrate that kind of sucking-in that a well-written book can do, the way it can build an atmosphere that can sometimes wrap all the way around you as a reader, the kind that makes you forget you're actually sitting in a chair and holding a book (or eBook, in my case, even a harder way to get sucked into a novel). There are things to be improved, to be sure; although he's better at it this time than in Via Dolorosa, for example, Malfi is still too guilty of badly-written so-called "ebonics" dialogue (or the rhythm and pattern and slang of urban blacks, a very hard thing to get right), and also has a tendency to include in his works what the Onion AV Club calls a "Magical Negro" character. All in all, though, I was really pleased with this novel, and was really glad I sat down and read it; for all of you who enjoy intelligent, poetic tales of weirdness, ones that refuse to be rushed, let me please recommend Passenger to you.

Out of 10:
Story: 7.0
Characters: 8.5
Style: 9.0
Overall: 8.6

*And to be clear, there's a "New Weird" subgenre among cutting-edge science-fiction writers right now too, largely led (and defined) by author and essayist Jeff Vandermeer. In fact, both subgenres rightly claim as their roots the original "weird" tales of the Victorian Age, the Nathaniel Hawthornes and Oscar Wildes and Edgar Allen Poes. This one literary trend in the 1800s then split in the 1900s into a more spooky supernatural wing and a more sciencey future-obsessed one, which is where we get the modern horror and science-fiction genres we know today.

[Ronald · Rating 4 out of 5]

I noticed that a goodreads friend obtained the book _Little Girls_ by Ronald Malfi, and that caused me to remember that I read this book, _Passenger_ by the same author a few years ago.

This book is well written. A man on a bus awakes and has memory loss about his identity. No IDs on him. The plot in the book consists of this man trying to figure out who he is, and what caused the amnesia. However, this man retained his excellent piano playing skills, which assists him in his investigation.

I think effective fiction writing instills feelings in the reader. This book instilled feelings in me. I was amused by some parts of the story, saddened by other parts. That's the way life is.

[Jeff Heimbuch · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't even describe to you how much I enjoy Ron's work. And this is no exception.
It was not what I expected it to be at all, not that that is a bad thing. In fact, it was even better. Ron has a way of creating deeply interesting, three dimensional characters...even if they have no memory of who they are.
Really, really good read.

[Kevin Lucia · Rating 5 out of 5]

SO good. Such a great voice, such smooth prose. And the twist...like a hard gut punch.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Evidently I've been migrating backwards through Malfi's bibliography, because I started with Little Girls (2015, I love that book so so so so much, please go read it), then Floating Staircase (2011), and now Passenger (2008). I really love marching through a single author's work: even when the premises & storylines are very different, you can still pick up echoes of the themes that interest them, the ideas they keep coming back to. In Malfi's case, he seems very interested in characters' lost & forgotten identities and buried pasts.

As his earlier 5th book, out of a prolific 14, Passenger is more rough around the edges than his later novels (obvy). The poeticism of the style is a little laboured at times, not as smooth and effortless as the other books of his I've read. The main character here -- the passenger himself -- is also necessarily hard to connect to, due to his amnesia; he's more interesting in his rambling internal thoughts, but in dialogue/conversation with other people, he retreats into "I don't know."s and isn't able to contribute much to his interactions with others. It's the danger of being a blank slate with no answers to offer, which is a fairly unavoidable side-effect of the premise.

But still, despite that, I was really into it. It's on Horror Aficionados' "Top 101 Horror Books" list, but I'm frankly surprised that people have classified it as a horror: it's much more of a thriller/mystery to me. As I mentioned in status updates, it's not a whodunit but a whoamI and whathappened. The writing is dream-like, anchored in the winter chill of Baltimore City and with a bit of an Odysseus motif, this poor man's long journey to come back to himself & the metaphorical Penelope & Telemachus. Our protagonist is wasting away both from not taking care of himself, but also from the mental distress & anxiety of not knowing who he is, where he comes from, what happened to him. The reader is left wondering too, and I found myself compulsively turning the pages just because I really wanted to know what his deal was. It's engaging, following him as he picks up little shreds of clues, easter eggs and breadcrumbs; it's the same appeal as watching something like Christopher Nolan's Memento (also one of my favourite movies).

Amnesia & memory storylines are just up my alley, though. My grandmother had early-onset Alzheimers, so I'm morbidly drawn to the subject: it's the worst kind of horror, this loss of self, this fragile construct of a personality. Because if you can't even depend on yourself and your own mind, then what can you rely on? It's the ultimate erosion of a foundation that we all take for granted.

Anyway, it's a great lil' mystery with a pretty satisfying ending.

SPOILERIFFIC DISCUSSION OF THE ENDING But again: that grim ending was just way up my alley, because I adore cyclicity and loops and characters being doomed to repeat their past mistakes, and ending lines echoing the beginning. The end is the beginning is the end. Also, it ties into the other Malfi books I've read in that it also reveals an interest in parent/child relationships & feelings. (/SPOILER)

(Fourth book of my Horror Aficionados reading challenge.)

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Passenger is a novel carved from one solid block of stone. Malfi the sculptor chips away intently revealing a sharp plane here, a smooth curve there, but doesn't unveil the resulting form until the final pages of the book. The novel's concept is deceptively simple, a man wakes up on a Baltimore city bus with no memory and no ID, only an address written on his hand. This allows for plenty of mystery, suspense and even a few comic moments. The plot and main character can wander in a seemingly aimless manner while the reader avidly searches for clues to the man's identity.

Passenger provides plenty of food for thought about how a person's past makes them who they are, how experiences help create identity. The book goes even further and implies that even when a person's past is unknown it still controls their future.

The book is written in a sparse, haunting style that resonates through each page and seems to swell to fill the slim volume, like a single note played in a large empty room. As always Malfi is the master of mood, creating a slow-building anxiety that forces your eyes to move faster across the page. It's a risky move to rest the whole book on a few final pages however the end does deliver with a satisfying but tragic revelation. Mysterious, thought-provoking and gritty Malfi's Baltimore is a fascinating place to visit but I'm glad I don't live there.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the kind of novel that I don't want to say much about for fear of ruining it. A man wakes up on a bus with no memories, and the story is his quest to discover who he is. It does not disappoint and the ending is unforgettable. 5 stars for sure.

[Ingrid Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a sensible, well written, tragic gem. My favorite Malfi so far.

[Nenatie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Die Rezi gibt es hier

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

My least favorite book by Malfi so far. Should have been a short story and then it would have worked. It took too long to get to the point.

[Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this story. Kept me wondering right to the end.

[Chrissie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,5 Sterne
Rezi: http://chrissies-kleine-welt.de/?p=1293

Was würdest du tun, wenn du in einem Bus in Baltimore erwachst. Du erinnerst dich an all das Erlernte in deinem Leben, wie man spricht, wie man läuft, wer der aktuelle Präsident ist. Du kannst dich aber nicht mehr an dich selbst erinnern, weder an deinen Namen, deinen Charakter noch an irgendein Teil aus deiner Vergangenheit. Dem namenlosen Protagonisten in “Passanger” ergeht es genau so.
Als er das erste Mal sein abgehärmtes Spiegelbild erblickt, seinen kahlgeschorenen Kopf, die neue Kleidung, die er trägt, erkennt er sich nicht. Er findet eine Adresse, die in seine Handfläche geschrieben wurde. Mit dem Ort hinter dieser Adresse beginnt seine Suche nach sich selbst.

Malfi wirft den Leser ebenso wie seinen Protagonisten in dieses Szenario hinein. Ahnungslos begleitet man “Moe” Schritt für Schritt auf der Suche nach seinem Leben und wird dabei oft philosophisch hinterfragt. Ist es nicht vielleicht ganz gut wieder komplett von vorne beginnen zu können? Mit absolut weißer Weste in ein komplett neues Leben zu fallen? Sollte man sich bei seiner Suche an öffentliche Organe wenden? Und was ist, wenn man nun ein gesuchter Schwerverbrecher ist? Ist “Moe” vielleicht sogar ein Spezialagent, dem man irgendwie die Erinnerungen nahm, damit er keine brisanten Geheimnisse ausplaudern kann?
Auf seiner Suche begegnet der Protagonist den verschiedensten Charakteren, die immer anders mit seiner Situation umgehen. Manche glauben ihm nicht, andere sind begeistert, wiederum andere bedauern ihn.

Ronald Malfis Schreibstil hat mich begeistert. Man muss ihn aufmerksam lesen, der anspruchsloseste ist er ganz gewiss nicht, aber der Autor versteht es durch wunderbare Schriftsprache scharfe und plastische Bilder im Kopf entstehen zu lassen. Man verfolgt das visuelle Geschehen, hört die begleitenden Geräusche, riecht das Aroma der Szenerie. Gepaart mit den philosopischen Aspekten des Buches war dies aus dieser Sicht ein wahrer Lesegenuss.

Der Autor zeichnet auch seine Charaktere sehr liebevoll und realistisch. Zu keinem Zeitpunkt hat man das Gefühl einer fiktiven, unrealistischen Person zu begegnen. Sie sind alle menschlich, mit ihren Vor- und Nachteilen, mit ihren Macken und Talenten.

Warum bewerte ich das Buch dann mit 3,5 Sternen?
Zum einen ist “Passenger” nicht spannend. Der Leser begeleitet “Moe” auf seinem Weg, dies ist auch alles sehr interessant und gut geschrieben, nur eben nicht spannend. Der Reiz dieser Geschichte liegt in anderen Aspekten.

Zudem fehlte mir eine ganze Zeit lang ein roter Faden. Ich habe mich immer wieder gefragt, wo ich denn nun bin, was für eine Art Geschichte ich lese. Einen Thriller, SciFi, Fantasy, Drama oder Horror? Dies ist einerseits sehr förderlich für die Geschichte, da man sich als Leser ebenso verloren fühlt, dennoch störte es mich.

Ob sich auflösen wird, zu welchem Genre dieses Buch zu zählen ist und ob der namenlose Charakter seine Identität wiederfinden wird, das werde ich nicht verraten. Das gehört einfach tief verwoben zur Geschichte und sollte von jedem Leser selbst entdeckt werden.
Nur eines: Der Schluss hinterließ mich mit einem ziemlich heftigen Kloß im Hals.

Normalerweise interessiert mich dieses Thema eher weniger, dennoch möchte ich das Cover des Buches sehr lobend erwähnen. Wie auch schon bei Bentley Little’s “Haunted” ist dieses Cover mehr als passend, sehr atmosphärisch und ein Eyecatcher. Ich wünschte mir, dass ich mehr tolle Bücher mit solch einem tollen Cover in meinem Regal haben könnte, so dass eben nicht nur der Inhalt, sondern auch das Äußere ansprechend ist.

“Passenger” von Ronald Malfi ist definitiv einen Blick wert, wenn man sich an Sprache und einem intelligenten Plot erfreuen, aber auch mit spannungsärmeren Kapiteln umgehen kann. Und ich wette, dass auch jeder andere Leser nach dem Beenden und Zuklappen des Buches einen Kloß spüren wird.

[Patricia Esposito · Rating 5 out of 5]

Which struggle is greater? To find lost memory or to lose a memory found? To do either, how far backward would a person have to go and how much of present living would be sabotaged in the process? These are the sad and cyclical questions eventually confronted by the protagonist in Passenger by Ronald Damien Malfi. But to say too much on that would be to reveal what the reader begs to have answered throughout the entire reading.

After waking on a bus with only an address scrawled on his hand and no memory of his identity, the protagonist begins his search for a past. The book rides swiftly on constant odd and disturbing revelations, as well as on the crazy, sometimes funny, sometimes brutal adventures the protagonist has with the lively, oddball characters who take him in: Clarence the junk collector who believes that lives, like junk, can be recycled; Patrice, the married woman he takes home, who questions whether life is ever free and clear; the musician brothers who let him play in their murdered brother's place, with clear stipulation that he is not Johnny, "ain't nobody replace Johnny."

Malfi makes the city of Baltimore alive, with the kinds of descriptions that make me leave my world for another, but it's a place where buildings are "arthritic," "black avenues lie unrealized," shops carry both "iron bars and welcome signs," and "neon sings ... in puddles of runoff and sewage and urine and oil." Everywhere in this city, memory haunts the protagonist's amnesic mind. The past feels tangible, yet fragile: walking through the "Egyptian dust" of the pawn shop he encounters "ceramic cats placed strategically like land mines," a piano with missing keys, the owner with suspenders hanging loose.

Like Clarence with his junk, it seems time is being recycled, and history repeats itself. But despite the character's dedicated, willful search, he seems to be on a downward spiral, as if with each step closer to memory, his life disintegrates. At one point the character asks, has anyone ever died from amnesia, "from memory alone?" And when he seeks refuge in a church, the cancer-ridden, "fossilized" nun tells him he is "skin and bones" and looks like a shadow of himself, suggesting maybe he doesn't want to find his memory at all.

At one point, he asks, "Can I be happy?" and it hits hard, like both a universal quest and an eternal frustration. Can we be happy with whatever lies deep in us, even if memory were erased and regrets forgotten? Or is memory rooted deep and inescapable? Malfi's book is a puzzle, a page-turning, stay-up-all-night kind of puzzle. The past haunts and the past warns, and I'm left wondering if a clean slate can ever be found.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A man wakes up on a Baltimore city bus with no memory of who he is or how he got there, and address written on the back of his hand. So begins The Passenger, the dark and paranoid new horror-thriller from Ronald Damien Malfi and Delirium Books. Malfi has written in a wide variety of genres and The Passenger will be many horror fans first introduction to his heart-pumping work.

The story starts off with a very simple premise and to say more would spoil the tightly-knit tale. Malfi writes tension and terror with startling talent and the reader is sure to remain transfixed to the book as the main character gets closer and closer to finding out the truth of his circumstances.

There is a dream-like quality at times as the main character wanders the streets of Baltimore, which one could argue is the book’s other main character. Malfi takes great care in vividly exploring the dirty and dangerous city and using the setting to its fullest effect. A constant sense of doom follows the main character as he explores the dark corners of Baltimore looking for any answer to his plight.

This is a gripping tale that the reader will not be able to put down. Malfi understands the finer points of tension building and mystery and puts them to great use in this dark and dreamy novel. This is a difficult work to review, as any commentary on the work could potentially spoil plot-points for the would-be reader. This is an immensely compelling work that one should go into knowing as little about as possible. The Passenger has many shocks and surprises waiting within and an immensely talented writer at the wheel.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nicht zu wissen, wer man ist, bringt so manchen um den Verstand. So auch den namenlosen Passagier, der in einem Bus in Baltimore aufwacht und nicht mehr weiß, wer er ist. Verzweifelt auf der Suche nach dem „Wer/Was/Wie bin ich“ erlebt man die verschiedensten Wandlungen im Laufe der Geschichte. Die anderen Protagonisten im Buch stellen Vermutungen an, wodurch man leicht in die Irre geführt wird. Die eigentliche Geschichte, die am Ende dabei herauskommt, ist sowohl schockierend als auch entfernt nachvollziehbar. Es wunderte mich also nicht, dass das Ende dem Anfang ähnelt.

Mich hat das Buch sehr gefesselt, denn ich wurde immer neugieriger wer der Unbekannte mit den vielen Spitznamen wirklich ist. Kleckerweise kommt der „Passenger“ voran, wobei er das ein oder andere Mal in Schwierigkeiten gerät. Gestört hat mich jedoch, dass öfter mal Wörter zu viel im Satz waren, also doppelt hintereinander oder ähnliches. Nach dem dritten Mal hat mich das doch geärgert, aber mein Lesefluss wurde dadurch nicht beeinträchtigt.

Das Genre „Mystery Stuff“ passt super, denn das Buch hat weder mit Thriller noch Horror etwas am Hut und mysteriös sind die Hintergründe allemal. Geschrieben wurde die Geschichte aus der Sicht des Hauptprotagonisten und der Schreibstil ist spannend, mitreißend und locker.

Das Buch hat mich absolut überzeugt und ich kann das Buch jedem empfehlen, der sich auch mal außerhalb der Genres Horror/Thriller umschauen möchten.

Copyright © 2014 by Rebecca H.

[Chuck Rios · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ronald Malfi has done it again! PASSENGER was a fantastic read, so good, in fact, I read it all in one sitting.
The description of the book says more than I ever can about the set up but what it dosent tell you is how you will feel after finishing this peice.
contemplative, thought provoking. A errie mystery in the horror vein. I really cared for the main character. As you read, he develops and we understand more about his memories. So, in a sense, we see the main characters development progress before our eyes. It was a brilliant trick.
Malfi really knows how to write and he writes in vivid detail. The city streets, the mood, the atmospheare, it was all so well rendered.
Only qualm... Its allways too short for me.
In the end, though, Passenger was very entertaining.
I highly recommend
Pick it up from darkfuse.com

[Julie Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting story. It is very well written and I found myself completely engrossed in the story. It is a bleak story with characters who are far from perfect. This is my first time to read this author. While I liked his style of writing, I was reading him as a recommendation for a new horror writer. This story is a lot of things, but horror is not one of them. I will try another story before I make up my mind. SPOILER ALERT:

There is a scene towards the end of the book that involves dog fighting. I refuse to read any dog fighting scenes, so I may have missed something by skipping the rest of the chapter.

[Geoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has some excellent writing, and one can tell the skill of the author. But I didn't care for it, as it was extremely similar in style to the movie Memento. In particular the beginning and ending. But in-between it tells its own story, and it was enjoyable tale to follow. If I had never seen the movie I would have liked this book a LOT, as it's written well. But, I couldn't get the similarities between the movie and the story out of my head, and I ended up disliking the story. The author needs to come up with something more original next time out, because he has the skill (this was written in 2009 and he's written some great stuff since this story).

[Dan Corley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an odd read for me. Each chapter would alternate whether I liked it or didn't, but overall I enjoyed it. It has a simple premise with a man who wkes up on a bus and doesn't know who he is or anything about his past. I am a family man, so the ending crushed me to a degree. This is a short read, but worth th $0.99 I spent on the download. Everything by Ronald Malfi or "The Malfinator" is good

[Leanna Lomanski · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found it a bit hard to get into at first but once I was into it I became thoroughly invested. The intricacies of the main character's mind as he unravels his identity and the gritty and interesting characters he meets along the way were totally engrossing. I loved that I wasn't able to predict the ending. This was my first book by this author but I will definitely read more of his work.

[Laurie Mcclary · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a dark boring story with a disappointing ending. The only reason I finished it was because I am on a trip where reading selections are limited, apparently reading it was better then nothing.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, interesting book. I didn't really get the ending, I hate when that happens!!!

[Karl]

This is copy 18 of 150 signed numbered copies.

[Amit · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my 7th book by one of my favorite auther Ronald Malfi & there's something about this book that I just can't point it out. But it was in a way overwhelmed my mind. There's again as I repeat something very deep and meaningful about this book that mesmerised in very core of my heart...

What will happen if you suddenly one night happened find yourself in a bus, while waking up a from short nap by sitting there and all of a sudden didn't know who you are and couldn't remember your own identity? It was in a positive thought bizarre to imagine. The book is about a man who doesn't remember his own identity and couldn't find any trace about him in the first point. He tried and tried. Wandering in the city he searched to find out who he really is and in that journey he find couple of characters who eventually tried too to find about his mystery...

Even though I am marking it as a horror genre but I don't think it could merely passed it as this genre but anyhow it is. I found the story of this book very ordinary (no offense) but it is sense with very much positive thinking. While you are reading you just didn't get this type of exceptional twist or something but as I said already the book will hook you up even if you can't find anything. That is I can say that the magic of the author here. I love those characters in here by the way the author created them. First say for the mysterious man who has no recall of his true self. But the way his character developed and described I just couldn't help like him. It was his character I say that the main reason I could afford to read this book. The journey he went through with those other characters too was decent enough to kept reading it. For a chance just think about Clarence. Who happened to be black (no hard feelings and by no offense) happened to found as a good guy, well not good eventually but he was very much OK enough. He tried to help that Mysterious man to find his identity, he gave him shelter and main fact he helped in many way. Though I would say that mysterious man of course earned by his dignity while one day in a club he played a piano and showed his talent. Even that time he didn't know who he was or from where he came from. He after then met a couple of guys and had that good and bad experience too. But Clarence has the most influencing part on him. There's lot of things and moment that the mysterious man endure, like threatening from a man by gun, forced to run away and many more. But above all I would like to draw some line about that girl Nicole...

Nicole Quinland that girl with whom the mysterious man spend his times for somedays in the end of this book. I liked that girl. I liked that girl very much. It is as simple as that. I really wish there's could be something between her and that unknown stranger. The way Ronald Malfi created it is like exactly that type girl I always wanted (no offense again). She so sweet by the given character. Her talk and the way she was making conversation which was what mostly attracted me in the first site. I wish I know more or say read more about her. But it was she who at the end gave some idea to that man to help him find out who he really was. She helped him in many way. There's those some sweet incidents between her and him that I really admired most. But all of a sudden like a movie in the rill it changed too when finally the strange man did find his identity. Yes of course there's that reason which is why the kept hidden from him. But finally when he did get the real picture it was then he realize what he had done...

Also before that girl there's a Nun involving with him in this book that I forgot to mention. I don't why but the Nun's character gave me the creepy feeing even though in here she was not evil or something but very helpful to that man. The Nun was so kind and generous that even tried to talk some sense on him and feed him too as he was very weak and hungry at the time he was meeting with that Nun. I wish too about that Nun I could read more but not ending her character too quickly...

So, it was in the end the final twist liberated and of course if did surprised me. There's that very sad ending which at least I can reveal without giving any spoiler. Loved it...

So, there goes 5 out of 5 from me...