Saucer (Stephen Coonts, 2002)

Taking a break from the classics and determined to get through some of the piles of books on the shelves in order to donate them to charity and clear some shelves, I picked up Saucer which I assume came in a boxed set of thrillers from WHSmiths as I have several stacked up. I say this a lot on this blog, but I went into it not knowing what to expect. It turns out the title summed it up! 

Young Rip Cantrell (with a name like that he would have to be American, right?) is doing some job in the Sahara on his summer vacation and comes across a saucer embedded in tens of thousands of year old rock. Professor Soldi's theories about mankind crashing to Earth in this saucer, and then 'devolving' into cavemen through lack of technological comforts and then evolving into the people we are today is interesting, but it's a sidebar to the real story which involves Rip and ex-Air Force test pilot Charley (a lady) flying the saucer out of the desert and back to America, and then to Australia and back to America again. All the while they are being tracked by US forces and the President, by Gaddafi's army (briefly) and then by a megalomaniacal Australian who kidnaps Charley and the saucer in order to sell it to the Chinese, Japanese, Russians or Europeans for $150 billion. 

It's all very far-fetched and full of little implausable plot glitches, and reads like the script of a Hollywood movie, complete with an over the top explosive third act on the villain's Australian cattle ranch, where each of the 4 delegates bidding for the saucer plants bombs, and the US launch missiles on an ally. Competently written, there's no sparkle and despite the enormity of the implications of finding a 140,000 year old saucer on mankind's history, the best bits are shunted for a Micheal Bay like chase through pretty locations with massive explosions and an under-written love story. It was a nice diversion for a week and now it can go to the charity shop.