Spencer, Scott: Men in Black

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Sam Holland, one-time serious author of two well-received novels, can barely pay his bills until a book he tossed off and published pseudonymously starts flying off the shelves. His Visitors from Above is a hit among conspiracy theorists, all UFOs and alien abductions  and the enigmatic disinformation specialists of Scott Spencer's title--those fellows who, "sallow of complexion" and inappropriately dressed, can convince alien spotters, Tommy Lee Jones-like, that they haven't seen anything whatever out of the ordinary. But financial success and the celebrity of a national book tour are difficult to swallow when they spring from a product Sam can neither feel proud of nor claim as his own. They are, moreover, empty rewards against the backdrop of Sam's crumbling personal life, his failing marriage, his teenaged son's recent disappearance.

Scott Spencer's Men in Black offers readers a complex story about one man's belated recognition of his life's value. Unfortunately, Spencer's late bloomer was not a man I could empathize with. Sam and his wife and son, the characters through whose eyes the story is told, are unlikable creatures who are dissatisfied with their circumstances--the perfectly good, indeed arguably enviable circumstances of their lives--and they make matters worse for themselves by behaving badly. In the end I did not care what the Hollands wound up doing with their lives--though I was certain alien abduction was not in the cards for them--figuring that they had merited whatever unpleasantness (divorce, incarceration) might lay in store after the last page. A good premise, then, but Men in Black fails, finally, because its characters cannot engage the reader's emotions.