 This book had red flags all over it. That's probably why it sat on my bookshelf for a couple years before I mustered the courage to read it. The first red flag was the author. While being an actor doesn't preclude one from being able to write a book, there's is a good chance that the publishing house is willing to promote poor quality in the hopes that people will buy it because of the name. Secondly, I bought it for $1 at a dollar store. Books aren't sold at the dollar store for no reason. Thirdly, the title suggests a series ("The Abductors") but in almost 10 years book two hasn't been written. Despite the warnings I read the book. It was pretty bad but it could have been a lot worse.
The plot was fairly simple. An alien race is abducting people and using replicas of the abductees to infiltrate society and place hydrogen bombs in all the major cities. Apparently the aliens intend to blow up all the cities in the world so they can take over. Due to some surprising coincidences private investigator McCallum discovers the whereabouts of the aliens. In cooperation with a group of researches and some secret government officials McCallum is able to attack the aliens and destroy their plans for taking over the world. And, of course, in the end he gets the girl.
Generally speaking simple and rehashed plots are not a problem for me. As long as the story adds something interesting then it still works for me. This book also did not suffer from poor writing skills. Frakes, or his co-author, did a good job of making sure that dialogue went smoothly, paragraphs flowed together, and there were very few awkward sentences. The reading was pleasant and easy.
The story was just too simplistic. That is, things worked too easily and didn't make sense. Early in the story an elderly man rents a room for two weeks in a rundown hotel in the middle of Portland, Oregon. He drags his large suitcase into his room, locks the door, then sits on the bed and watches the suitcase. That's all. Five days later we learn that this man is really a replica of one of the abductees and the suitcase is really a hydrogen bomb. The research team and investigators break into the man's room and take the bomb. In the process of capturing the man and the bomb the man melts away (he wasn't really a human, obviously). But the bomb doesn't explode. The military simply flies off with it and disarms it at sea. Based on this incident the team infers that there are bombs like this planted in all the cities of the world. The US president is called and breifed. He orders search teams to score all of the cities in the US to find all of the bombs. The search starts in the morning and by the end of that day all the bombs have been found. A similar scenario takes place in all the other major countries of the world. In one day hundred of hydrogen bombs through the world are found and disarmed and it's all kept secret. The public never finds out. Amazing. Even more amazing is the fact that the aliens don't seem to notice that all of their bombs have been disarmed.
Once all the bombs have been disarmed the team decides to go on the offensive. In order to prevent the aliens from planing more bombs they decide to find the aliens and destroy them. The research team that has been investigating the aliens has accumulated quite a bit of data about the aliens. It has tracked all abductions and sightings worldwide over the last 50 years. However, that group cannot figure out where the aliens are staying. Along comes the private investigator. While staring at a map with all of the abductions flagged he comes to the conclusion that the aliens are centered in the middle of where the abductions happen. Using a peice of string and some high-school geometry McCallum pinpoints the location for most of the 20 alien ships on the planet. The team grabs three military helicopters and heads to the closest one. Once they find the alien ship, right where McCallum said it would be, the helicopters fire all their missles at it. In the battle the alien ship is destroyed entirely. Well, that was easy. Lather, rinse, repeat. The same process is used in the other US cities.
There seems to be something wrong with this whole picture. Everything is too easy and not at all realistic. There is no way that hundreds of bombs could be found and disarmed in the USA in a single day without someone finding out about it. It just couldn't happen. These aliens have to be the dumbest aliens around. Once their bombs (which were remote controlled so you would expect to know where they were) started disappearing they would start to either blow the remaining ones up or create some other plan to rescue them. Likewise, when one alien ship started being attacked, it would have communicated with the others to let them know what was going on.
Having lived in the Portland, Oregon for nearly 15 years I enjoyed all the references to the city. It was an added bonus that the main encounter with the aliens (I guess it was supposed to be the climax of the story) happened in Eastern Oregon not far from where I grew up. So, at least for me, there was one redeeming apect to the book.
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