Waiting
   Frank M. Robinson
  1999 A Tom Doherty Assoc. Book NY USA
   ISBN: 0312866526


There are people living among us who look just like us & they've been here for a long, long time - waiting. They are not, however, exactly like us at all.

In the beginning of Frank Robinson's Waiting we are hurled into a gasping, chilling chase. The sense of being watched, of being...well, herded? As human reason surrenders to something else, we scurry & scamper before an enemy we can't see.

Then we meet Artie in his favorite dream & all seems right with the world. We awaken & it's just before the Christmas holidays. While Artie enjoys the company of his wife at breakfast, her dad is dying & she must leave to be with her parents. He shares some chatter with his son before Mark coasts his wheelchair down the ramp to the school van. Artie trundles off to work & his co-worker Connie. They begin planning a mid-holiday special when across the newsroom floor they catch a glimpse of the new anchorwoman watching them. After that Connie has a change of attitude. Strange.

It's when Larry turns up later that morning, mauled to death that Artie connects with Mitch, an interrogator in ‘Nam who is now a shrink & they begin to wonder what got Larry killed & why Larry's wife & children have vanished. Then Mark doesn't come home & Artie can't get through to his wife up north & he gets scared. Larry was supposed to have given the talk at the Suicide Club meeting the night before. Artie, Larry & Mitch are founding members of the Club & they have all survived being Haight-Ashbury hippies, the Viet Nam War & the last twenty years in San Francisco. Some, however, have survived even longer.

Frank Robinson has given us a fascinating & well-wrought view of a species about to self-destruct. It doesn't matter that we've walked on the Moon & written symphonies to die for, we have also fouled our nest & slaughtered with habitual indifference; & while we've created this fabulous artform: language, we have also learned to lie with it.

They don't lie. They can't because their language is cerebral imaging & this is an anthropological science fiction mystery. Waiting entrances you with dioramic, virtual dreams of a time before history, when humanoids clashed & yet the living was so sweet. It also lets the Hounds from Hell out.

You follow Artie, an affable, canny & tenacious hero who lives so many lives: his memories of ‘Nam; the group of friends he's grown up with; his love of the City by the Bay; the dreams that come to him so full of color, sounds & scents; his beloved wife & son; his work. In all these aspects Artie becomes assaulted by a fearsome & invisible invader & he must seek, hunt & learn who, among his friends is what & who can he trust.

My husband was impressed and so was I! I relished meeting Them, hearing Their stories & seeing Their points of view. I was reminded of Altered States, Clan of the Cave Bear and Quest for Fire. In Waiting, Frank Robinson has woven one fine thriller, tapping at our modern fears & plucking at our modern hearts. Very well done!
(04/25/99)

Rebecca