Alien Hunter: The White House

An unthinkable crime—the murder of an aide in the middle of the day at the White House—catalyzes the plot of Strieber’s unwieldy third Alien Hunter novel (after Alien Hunter: Underworld). Steel-willed operative Flynn Carroll reprises his role as an agent extraordinaire in Detail 242, the CIA’s secret task force assigned to counter Aeon, a planet whose aliens clandestinely invaded Earth years earlier. When Carroll uncovers a plot by the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence to collaborate with Aeon and provoke nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, he’s thrust into a series of adventures that he barely survives. Though exciting in spots, Strieber’s thriller is punctuated with lengthy generic action sequences, and his caricature of the deliriously dysfunctional First Family at the center of the intrigues approaches the comic absurd. Portentous prose (“Time does not eradicate the madness of men”) further magnifies the novel’s shortcomings. Agent: Russell Galen, Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency. (Apr.)