Invasion by Robin Cook ***

Invasion is a first-contact novel and a departure from Robin Cook's normally realistic science-based plots. What can I say about a novel that appears to be a novelization of a made-for-cable movie? At best, Invasion by Robin Cook, is a pop art object like Andy Warhol's soup cans or Marilyn Monroes.

At worse, I can assure fans that Robin Cook maintained his penchant and predilection for large words. This one popularized by Calvin and Hobbes:

Wow, your are transmogrifying into a world-class Casanova.

or these Latinate words from science and medicine:

Inside the locked valuables box the black discform object did the same, particularly one of the eights small domed excrescences arrayed around the object's rim.

I can also assure the many Robin Cook fan's that the writing includes the normal quota of cliches and cliched plot elements.

The disappointment is the science. In an admission of the silly science, Robin Cook omits his normal addendum where he explains the science, while instead he inserts silly errors - At 8:15 AM in Santa Fe, we read:

With the time difference maybe the CDC [in Atlanta] doesn't open for an hour or so.

- and crazy, conspiracy science with a mega-viruses encoded in a highly conserved segment of DNA:

It's in one of those non-coding segments, or so people thought.

Of course, the plot moves along briskly, as expected. As Robin Cook has written many, many novels, I'd suggest reading some of the others first, unless you really love first-contact science fiction.