Dreamland: A Novel of the UFO Cover-Up

High energy and a clever concept can't rescue this lackluster thriller about a UFO conspiracy that dates back to the 1940s. The plot presupposes the truth of the Roswell Incident, a UFO crash the Pentagon has supposedly covered up for almost 50 years. The surviving aliens are now under close observation at a secret military base where they have their own breeding project and are developing a high-tech weapon called JOSHUA. The aliens have their own agenda, however, and they abduct pregnant astronomer Annie Katz and relieve her of her three-month-old fetus. Annie's history of miscarriages is used to justify her subsequent behavior: the day after being told she isn't pregnant, and never was, she goes back to work. By the time she finally undergoes hypnosis to relive her abduction, it's too late to alleviate the plot's dull uniformity, engendered by too-brief scenes, too many characters and too much focus on action at the expense of atmosphere (and, in Annie's case, of believability). Due in part to the authors' spare prose, events happen too quickly and to little effect, and the narrative suffers from a brittle superficiality that stifles the reader's interest. Author tour. (Feb.)