"Wait here," the guide said. Then he stepped down from the Land Cruiser and set off on a path so sketchy it might not have been a path at all.

If you are not uneasily holding your breath at this point, you will be soon, as the "benign indifference" of nature in the African sub-Sahara takes hold. Two couples, American tourists on a safari, watch their guide disappear into the bush and in the next twenty-four hours they, too, come to realize that the most certain of paths may become sketchy, and that a "short drive in any direction can change the landscape entirely," not only of the savanna, but of a life.

Cousins involves you with her characters swiftly; they are people you know, if not necessarily well, and generally admire -- the sort of people you would consider yourself fortunate to travel with on a vacation. As their shortcomings become more apparent in the face of the totally unexpected, you keep faith with them, and just hope that they will keep faith with themselves. And there is the matter of time: it just hangs there, in the suffocating heat, in the vast blue sky, in the uncertainty.

It is Africa, however, that holds the reader spellbound. In the midst of all the tension, there are moments of such sheer beauty that you pause, reread, and almost regret moving on with the story. Passing a site of huge termite mounds, the vegetation gives way to chalky hardpan. A kestrel cruises overhead casting a shadow; jagged tree limbs claw the sky; a large weaver nest hangs suspended from a marula tree. Bark and wood and shadow become almost indistinguishable, until the grey palette takes on shape, size and movement: an elephant. A dung beetle walks backward on its front legs, head down, while its hind legs roll a perfectly round sphere of excrement destined for soft soil, where the scarab will place it in a depression and lay eggs on top. Later its larvae will burrow into their edible nursery and feast on it. A scorpion pops from its lair, secures a spider between two grasping pedipalps. There is a flap of wings and an owl rises to the sky with the scorpion in the pinch of its talons. A sable antelope with black-curving horns at least three feet long moves downriver, away from a leopard. Three warthogs kneel to drink while a fourth keeps watch. An Ethiopian snipe steps steadily away as it forages in a muddy pool. Even the monkeys in the leadwood tree are on the lookout. Their warning chirps and chatter sound like percussion instruments against the morning chorus.

One could not ask for a better guide than Cousins to this world of the savanna. When Abby shifts into fourth gear and heads for the road, we are all a little sorry.

Bookreview.com rates this book a Must Read and recommends it highly for book clubs. There is a lot to think and talk about in "Waiting for Bones."