Officer Friendly by Lewis Robinson
ROB BIUS
Officer Friendly is a great collection of stories
that takes place in Maine. The characters are relatable for the most part, but
the circumstances can be far from such. Stories had twilight zone plots, plots
that seem to be taken from my life, and plots about regular people facing
decisions that would fit their lives. The rich and powerful and the poor and
unimportant are all characters, whether its first person or third person you’re
really only in the mind of one character and it draws you in. Overall I would
recommend this book.
Officer Friendly.
This is the shortest story in the book and my
personal favorite. The characters are carefree teenagers and by the book small
town cop. It revolves around Jack Ritchie, Travis Ziegler and Officer Friendly.
Jack and Travis are shooting fireworks off in the Parking lot of J.M. Biggies
and Officer Friendly pulls up, he has the teenagers behaving like stereotypical
and believable teenagers. They run and Jack gets and Officer Friendly puts him
in the squad car and questions him, having dealt with cops in non-serious
situations, Officer Friendly was spot on. He was by the book, and playing
tough. After a while they see an old man walking which turns out to be Travis
and leads to a foot race. Officer Friendly has a heart attack and Jack and
Travis help him and call in to the station and run. This story is from Jack’s
point of view. He is sarcastic teenager, and Travis seems like that also. The dialogue
runs the story, and imagery is only to support the dialogue. This story is my favorite because it reminded
me about the only time I’ve “ran” from the police. It was at Sugar Mountain and
a long story so I’ll just hit the highlights. I bought a hat from off a friend
of mine who had just stolen it from the ski shop. I walk through the ski shop
wearing it. Now the cops come in. I don’t remember the kids name but he tells
me that they are looking for me and the hat is stolen. I take off the hat and hear
a walkie talkie on the other side of a wall describing me. I run to the
chartered bus and tell the driver I feel sick and want to nap inside. I change
my jacket hide my hat and grab my razor to shave behind a snow drift. As I’m
putting my razor up under the bus a cop walks by and doesn’t see me. I slowly enter
the bus and go to the back. As I sit there I see several cops walking around
the parking lot. The kid that told me this comes to the bus and tells me that
he “heard” the cops had orders to shoot to kill and had shotguns and M-16’s.
Stupidly I believed him and so I slipped in between the seats. Obviously they
weren’t doing that but I didn’t know better. That outlandish experience is the
reason I like his stories, they are outlandish.
The Toast
The whole time I was reading this I thought I was in
The Twilight Zone. This is a very different story, weird but a good weird. This
man meets his mom’s new husband Hutch, who then takes him to meet the rest of
his family have fun at Hutch’s Uncle’s, the old man as he was called, birthday.
And kill the birthday boy. And he does it. And I was engrossed in this story.
The family is all behind it and they give him the gun and at the last minute
when it looks like he is chickening out the old man rushes him with a knife
gets shot and everybody claps. This story is completely outrageous and
unbelievable but engrossing and intriguing. The characters seem to know that
the narrator was going to be told to shot the old man, as everything either in
context of him doing it or priming him to do it. I cannot relate to it nor believe it but its
fiction and just fictional enough to read again and again.
Fighting at Night
This story is about preparation for a big fight. Not
the fight itself but the preparation. That is why this is my least favorite
story. You don’t get to see the fight which is the reason I chose to read the
story so early. The subtle interest by Jason in Alice was interesting, and
Jason reminded me of a lot of people I’ve trained with people whose motivation fazed
in and out. The characters in this story were the most relatable in the book I
think. I felt like I was given more insight into the characters from the
training regime and love, more like “like” than love, interest than any other
story. The delivery of this story was human like; everybody knows Jason, Peter,
and Alice. That’s why I graded it so hard. I wanted to see the fight.
- Lewis Robinson
- Interviews
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interesting
websites featuring or about the Lewis http://www.nea.gov/features/writers/writersCMS/writer.php?id=10_27
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and
places to buy the my friend Lewis's books
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