Grünes Gift

Fans of Robin Cook's many thrillers will be happy to know another one is on the way. In this latest outing, Invasion, Cook envisions a contact with extraterrestials that is closer to Alien than to E.T.. A gigantic spaceship arrives in the stratosphere to dump some black disks onto Earth. Touch these things at your own risk, however; unsuspecting souls who handle the disks receive a sting, soon followed by flulike symptoms and ending in a kind of zombie assimilation into the alien consciousness. And make no mistake: these aliens are up to no good--we know this because the victims of the UFO-flu are soon transformed into hideous reptilian creatures. Apparently, one consequence of being trapped by the aliens is that victims lose all semblance of natural speech--most notably, contractions. The book abounds in dialogue such as, "You must flee, Cassy," and "The electrical grid has been interrupted. There will be no force counteracting the antigravity ..." Still, readers looking for a good beach or bathtub book will find Invasion is right on the money.