Here's a little secret with which to start your day. A lot of writers, particularly those who have achieved mega-success, maintain a little savings account of books. It could be made of books they wrote in wondrous spurts fueled by the combination of energy and inspiration, books they always wanted to write but for one reason or another never got published, books different from those they normally write; but they are there. Stephen King had (has) so many of them that he invented another writer to take them off of his hands. Dean Koontz and Donald Westlake have done it as well. I have my suspicions about Elmore Leonard, but that's another story. What is interesting is that when one of these books pop up it is often so good that one wonders why it wasn't published earlier.
SAUCER, I think, is one of those books from the Stephen Coonts reserves. I would guess that it was written sometime between 1997 and 1999. If I'm correct, then the reason that it was not published before now is obvious: Coonts was in the middle of his Jake Grafton tales, making those better and better. The last of these, AMERICA, published a few months before September 2001, was so eerily prescient, in hindsight of a terrorist attack on the United States, that watching the horror unfold on TV was almost (with a few important differences) like catching the ultimate disastrous consequences of life imitating art. It's accordingly possible that Coonts decided to catch a break and dust this one off. We're certainly the richer for it.
Coonts wastes no time getting to the point in SAUCER. Rip Cantrell (great name, that), a member of a seismic team in the Sahara Desert, spots some reflective light in a place where there shouldn't be any. An investigation reveals that the light source is a piece of metal improbably buried in sandstone. The metal turns out to be a flying saucer that has rested there for at least 140,000 years. The discovery, in this age of instantaneous worldwide communications, satellite cameras, and most importantly, loose lips, does not remain a secret for long. The first outside agency on the scene is a U. S. Air Force UFO investigation team. They are closely followed by a team of bully boys sent by Roger Hedrick, a ruthless Australian billionaire (the second richest man in the world...just behind Bill Gates) who is planning to sell the saucer. And the third is a group of Libyian soldiers.
The saucer, you see, is in a piece of real estate in the middle of a square claimed by three different countries, including the Libyans. There's one problem, though. Cantrell feels, by virtue of his discovery of the saucer, that it is his. He enlists the (somewhat involuntary) help of Charley Pine, a drop-dead gorgeous ex-Air Force pilot who was brought along by the UFO Investigation team in an advisory capacity. The saucer, as it turns out, is almost ridiculously easy to fly. And before you know it, Cantrell and Pine are giving people all over the world Kodak moments and memories to recount to their grandchildren.
That, however, is just the first fifth or so of SAUCER. The U. S. Government and Hedrick really, really want the saucer. Hedrick will do absolutely anything to get it and has the resources to do it. When Hedrick kidnaps Pine and the saucer (would that be a "saucernap"? Or is a "saucernap" the dormant state of an extraterrestrial vehicle?), Cantrell proceeds to get them both back. The result is the explosive climax we've come to expect from Coonts, who never disappoints.
SAUCER may not be a Jake Grafton novel, but it's certainly one of Coonts's best efforts. If the idea of an Air Force pilot being able to more or less jump into an extraterrestrial vehicle and fly off with it gives you pause, Coonts has a plausible explanation for you. I would go so far as to say that when we ultimately come across evidence of an extraterrestrial civilization it will be in the manner described in SAUCER; that is, if some of the events depicted in SAUCER haven't occurred already. Coonts speaks to that, too.
SAUCER is what would once have been called a "ripping yarn," full of adventure, suspense, and incremental romance. As much as I enjoy his Jake Grafton efforts, I never missed Jake once. If that is any measure of success, then Coonts has succeeded, and masterfully.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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