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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780812541649
ISBN number: 0812541642
Label: Tor Books
Manufacturer: Tor Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 368
Printing Date: April 15, 2000
Publishing house: Tor Books
Sale Popularity Level: 947924
Studio: Tor Books
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
From the author who brought us the distinguished spy thriller Death of a Marionette and The Towering Inferno, one of the most popular films of the '70s, comes Waiting, an intense novel of contemporary menace, in the mode of Robinson's 1950s classic, The Power.
There are people living among us, who look just like normal human beings. They've been here for a long time--waiting. But they aren't exactly like us at all. Some of them can read minds, and in subtle ways take over what your are thinking, control you for a while.
They can make you love.
They can make you die.
One ordinary man in San Francisco, Arthur Banks, begins to find them out, and immediately his life and his family are in danger. It's a paranoid's worst nightmare. But that's just where it starts. He may well be fighting for the survival of the entire human race.
'I've always maintained that Frank M. Robinson's The Power was one of the best terror tales ever told. Waiting is even better, rich with character, suspense and constant surprise. This is one of the best chillers of the entire decade. It is guaranteed to give you nightmares. Reading this book was a pure pleasure.'--Mystery Scene
Amazon.com Review:
Veteran thriller writer Frank M. Robinson, who has been working in the genre since his 1950s classic The Power, approaches the millennium at full strength with a truly frightening and extremely plausible story. In Waiting, another race of human beings are about to take control of the earth. This alarming discovery was made by a Dr. Lawrence Shea--who must now pay a high price for his find. Shea is stalked on a journey to San Francisco by one of these 'humans,' and is then killed. From the very very first step of this journey, Robinson grabs our attention with a combination of visceral and intellectual assaults.
Shea, we discover, was on his way to a meeting of the Suicide Club, a group of friends who gather regularly to discuss new developments in their particular area of expertise. Another club member, television journalist Artie Banks, begins to probe Shea's death and quickly finds it extremely suspicious--especially when more doctors involved in a routine autopsy are also killed. Other members of the club, as well as Artie's wife and disabled stepson, come under scrutiny. The horrible details of Robinson's alternate race of humans are gradually unveiled to Banks: Our original plan was simple: Stay hidden until all of you died in wars or starved to death in a habitat you had ruined beyond saving. Unfortunately, it's our habitat as well.
Robinson's creepy, credible tale will certainly have you looking much more closely at friends and associates. --Dick Adler
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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I was pulled into this science thriller by the murder of a doctor. Mr. Robinson moved the story along but then the bottom fell out. It became too talky with long and drawn out monologues by the central characters. Still, it had its moments but I figured it out with 60 pages to go. It was a decent read.
Rated by buyers -
This book caught my attention because it promised something new and different. It started out great and fizzled about half way through. The author had an original idea for a storyline but didn't seem to know how to keep the momentum going.
The premise of the book is a species of man has survived and blended in for thousands of years, biding their time till they could take over the planet and rid it of all homo- sapiens. It's almost impossible to tell the difference between the species unless you know what to look for. Artie is a homo-sapien who is caught in the crossfire and is in a race with time to find out what is going on and hopefully put a stop to it before it's too late.
This book is not a total waste of time, but it lacks excitement and depth. After reading 2/3 of the story, you find yourself wanting to just put the book down, but you have invested time and the story is just interesting enough that you trudge on to find out how it ends. I certainly wouldn't buy this book new, if you can get it from the library, at least you will only lose a little time, not money, to read it.
Rated by buyers -
This book has good atmosphere and a fascinating premise - another species of humans survives into the present; like us but unlike us, they'll do anything to protect their secret. I think the author put a lot of thought into the history and characteristics of the species and didn't have much left over to watch out for inconsistencies, of which there are too many, both in the plotting and in characterizations. An example of the latter is that when the protagonist, Artie, thinks his son has been taken and probably murdered by the "Old People," he's precisely as upset as if they had snatched his favorite coffee mug. The solution to the mystery of the disappearance of Artie's son and wife is telegraphed from the very beginning, the Old People veer wildly from wise/innocent/victimized to vicious and coldblooded, and Artie's turn-around at the end of the novel is unbelievable and - if you're a homo sapiens - pretty unforgiveable. That being said, I still found WAITING a fairly enjoyable read, mainly for the speculation about another human species and the "flashbacks" to life 35,000 years ago.
Rated by buyers 
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I was suckered into reading this book by the notation on the title page that it was an NPR "All Things Considered" top 10 book for the summer. I'll not fall for that again. The book has an interesting, even promising, premise; it is in the execution that it is so awfully flawed. Had the author a decent editor, or even an editor, maybe the glaring inconsistencies that overwhelm the book might have been avoided. I found myself aggravated over and over again that I was wasting my time. Unfortunately I have the `finish it no matter what" syndrome.
The enemy demonstrates his super power by making a 76 year old man do what is physically impossible. He crushes dog's chests with a thought, is able to dispatch ordinary humans by inducing heart attacks, strokes, etc, but somehow finds it difficult, to impossible, to dispatch the protagonist for almost the whole book? Knowing the enemy is destroying all who even casually know about "them" the protagonist cavalierly and with no guilt ignores those about to be killed. And while the "hound" has the power to dispatch mere humans with a mere thought, he suddenly resorts to bullets? The protagonist's adopted son disappears but his search for him is so tepid as to be unbelievable.
I hate sloppy writing, inept editing and hubris. This is definitely an author I will avoid in the future.
Rated by buyers 
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I would like to start out by saying that this is an exellent novel and I recommend it to anyone. Usually, after I read a book, I check the Amazon customer reviews just to see what other readers thought about it. What I saw about this book was expected, people going on and on about the rediculous environmental propaganda. While the book did mention some environmentalist views, I did not find it at all disturbing. Some of these reviews make it seem as if every page you look at will give you another reason to 'save the environment.' That simply is not true. There would be maybe a few paragraphs of it every few chapters, and even though I hate it when authors include political views in a book, I found it bearable, and anyway it was overshadowed by the book's plot which I found very intriguing.
(This is not a spoiler; it is the equivalent of what you will read on the back of a book.)
In Waiting, the main character, Artie, investigates the death of a friend and fellow "Suicide Club" member. He finds out about the existence of another species of human, dubbed the "Old People," who have the ability to send thoughts into the minds of others, and the plot goes on from there.
In another review I looked at, the reviewer argues that the "Old People" are not superior to humans, that they are just the same, and that even though they are supposedly so worried about the environment, they still drive cars and pollute. Well, the fact is that to Old People are superior; it is essential to the plot of the story. And Robinson, in my opinion, does not try to portray our race as evil, because in the story, both sides kill. It is human nature, and yes though the Old People are a different species, they are essentialy human, and their struggle to take back the Earth from Homo sapiens is also human, and I do not think that it has anything to do with the environment, though they use it as an excuse. It has to do with territory. They think they can run the world better, so they try (again, human nature).
Anyway, this is not a big book of propaganda as some would have you believe. Though this book was obviously written to get the author's "save the environment" message across, it is not the whole thing, and you should not start the book expecting that. It is instead about a war between two species of humans, one which has been waiting to take their world back.
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