The Wave [Hardcover]

When Errol Porter is woken by night after night of strange phone calls, he has no idea how much his life will change. At first the calls are unnerving, a voice bemoaning, "Cold...naked, cold... naked." Night after night the calls come, in the waning hours of the morning. His divorce imminent, Porter is still recovering from that emotional trauma, his well-paying computer job a thing of the past, along with his broken marriage. Currently, Errol is working at Mud Brothers Pottery Studio and living in a garage-cum-living space. The only light on the horizon is a burgeoning romance with Nella, a lively Caribbean ceramicist at the studio, who inspires Errol to look beyond the painful past year with an eye to the future.

The calls are increasingly unsettling to Errol, especially as the voice becomes more familiar, eventually claiming to be Porter's father, dead for the past six years. When the voice calls him Airy, a childhood name, Errol is hooked, unable to resist rushing to the cemetery where his father is buried. Once at the graveyard, Errol discovers a stranger who is not a stranger, a man who will challenge every assumption Porter has known, thrusting him into a surreal world where the impossible is increasingly viable. The stranger draws others into Porter's life, implacable men on a mission that is both stunning and brutally efficient. His simple existence no longer relevant, another dimension offers an amazing possibility, along with a frightening pursuit by those who fear what they cannot control.

Drawing on an imaginative premise, this supernatural story transcends the acceptable boundaries of reality, fascinating and thought-provoking, a call to look beyond out petty daily concerns and question the rigid, frightened society we have wrought. Crossing the line between the known and the unknown, The Wave is a parable for our times, informed by a deep concern for the direction of humankind driven by a fear of difference and a shocking disregard for individual rights. At the heart of Errol's quest to unravel a world far beyond his ken lies his capacity to transcend the ordinary, thrust into a future of infinite potential. Luan Gaines/ 2006.

Things are not going well for Errol Porter, but then he starts getting those strange incoherent phone calls in the middle of the night. Someone addressing him by his childhood pet name, "Airy." Someone who claims to be his (long deceased) father. Then it gets even stranger. Errol goes to the cemetery and finds a naked, incoherent young man who claims to BE his dead father. And knows all kinds of things about him and his family that only his late father could possibly know.

So, has the late Mr. Porter been raised from the dead? Nothing as simple as that. No, indeed. Mr. Porter's DNA and his memories have somehow been incorporated into something called "The Wave," a life-form that goes way beyond anything we know. A life-form that brings everything into mystical unity, and--well--I can't explain it. You'll just have to read the book.

If the first half of the novel builds upon familiar elements of Mosleyana--home, family, sex, race--the second half soars into another dimension--stocked with alien life forms and paranoid government agencies, and builds to an unbelievable conclusion.

Author Walter Mosley is a literary genius, and I consider myself a fan, but this is not his best work. The plot doesn't hold together well enough to ever be believable. Who or what--really--is G.T.--the young man who claims to be Errol's father? The book explains all that--but not really. Not in a way that's convincing. Still, it does read easily, flows like music, with overtones of love, betrayal, loss, sadness, and--of course--sex.

If you love Mosley's work, you'll love this one. If you're not familiar with him, this is probably not the book for you to start with. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

Unemployed system administrator Errol Porter thinks nothing of the calls except for the inconvenience as they wake him up every night. He assumes someone is pranking him with the insistence that the caller is his father. Errol's dad died in 1996. As the calls keep coming, Errol begins to wonder if he might be a bit deranged as the person on the other end is beginning to speak and sound just like his father and more frightening the man knows insider information that only he and his father Arthur Bontemps Porter III could know.

Unable to resist Errol agrees to meet Arthur, but is stunned when he sees his dad's face, albeit a much younger Arthur than he remembers. He wonders if GT ("Good Times") is a con, but has no idea what the person would benefit from this ruse or could he be a ghost? US Army officer Dr. David Wheeler places Errol under house arrest until he can figure out how to persuade his superiors that we have been invaded by "demons from hell" and how to combat them. While David expects the invasion of the body snatchers, Errol trusts no one especially the Feds or his so-called dad, but admits while he ponders what next as the sex with David's wife is good.

As he did with FUTURELAND, Walter Mosley displays his vast skills with this superb science fiction thriller. The story line focuses mostly on Errol who keeps digging one step at a time only to find that next stride even more convoluted and confusing. Like the hero, readers will wonder what is going on until suddenly the 200 plus page novel is finished in one delightful sitting. Sci Fi fans will see why mystery readers find it easy to give THE WAVE to the great Walter Mosley.

Harriet Klausner