Shadow
by
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'What's your name, buddy?' The officer on the desk had the usual tired, slightly patronizing tone in his voice. For the first half hour of his watch he might have made the supreme effort and tried to sound as though each inebriate they brought in was the first he had booked in his entire life--some psychological bit he had picked up at the self-improvement course he was taking. By midnight the effort was simply too great, and the what's-your-name-buddy came out about the way God intended it. 'St. Paul.' 'How's that again?' 'Saint Paul.' The officer hesitated a beat or two. He pushed his graying hair out of his eyes with his hand. 'You will find, sir, that your visit to Your Police Department will be rendered considerably easier and more pleasant if you will make a reasonable effort to co-operate with the interrogating officer. Like, this makes you precisely the sixth smart-ass we've had in here this evening. Now, let's try again. Your name, please?' 'Saint Paul. I'm sorry; I didn't choose it.' 'That's okay, Paul, I'm the Virgin Mary.' The desk man sighed resignedly. 'This guy have any ID on him, Howse?' Officer Howse hadn't found any ID. 'Another John Doe. Howse, you got a positive genius for draggin' in the pant-less Does these days. Must be your own private sewer you're gettin' 'em out of. Let's see, this'll be John Doe number five this evening. And the charge? Oh, hell, lemme guess.' Actually, the dialogue never runs quite like this. Looking back, Chris couldn't be sure there was any recognizable exchange at all between the desk man and Howse, nothing but official jargon, mumbled, meaningless, almost ritualistic in its absurdity. One is left only with the mental stimulation of inventing; supplying thoughts where none existed; building witty conversation where before there were only grunts; imagining what might have been if only it hadn't been so very late at night, if only this dreary scene hadn't been played so countless many times before, if only...
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About the Book
This is a story of despair and the reaction of two disenchanted people to it. Chris, a sometime poet and a loser, meets Cara, a young San Francisco artist, and the two fall deeply in love. Cara has a plan that rescues Chris from financial oblivion and gives them both a new and wildly successful life--entirely outside the existing moral culture. They proceed with their crusade, to right single-handedly some of society's more egregious wrongs, while remaining one step ahead of the authorities--until their Shadow, a strange man who is stalking them turns their lives completely upside down.
About the Author
Although Mr. Rising was trained as an engineer and spent much of his life designing space hardware, his first love was always writing. 'Better to invent people than machinery,' he maintains. 'It aids in understanding human nature.'
He flew torpedo bombers from an aircraft carrier in WW II, for the Navy, after which he graduated from the University of California at Berkeley.
He is now retired and lives with his wife in Lucerne, California, where he writes stories full time. He has published several articles about short stories. His previous novel, Caryl's Game will be out by August 2000.