A PSYCHO-CRIMINAL EXTRATERRESTRIAL ON A SUBURBAN CUL-DE-SAC
A FAMILY ON THE BRINK OF ALL-ENCOMPASSING INSOLVENCY
A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD UBERGENIUS DAUGHTER IN THE LINE OF FIRE
CAN SHE SAVE THE FAMILY, NOT TO MENTION THE PLANET?
An extraterrestrial crashes into a suburban cul-de-sac Colonial, absorbs every binary bit of information ever chronicled in all of human history, rearranges its molecules and presents itself as a couple of late and legendary film noir superstars, then immediately displays an appetite for debauchery, depravity, decadence, and destruction, seducing the family into its psychopathic criminal orbit with irresistible Hollywood panache, alluring sexual charisma, and inconceivable intergalactic powers … all in the name of saving the family from their emotional, marital, and financial ruin.
But uber-genius daughter Mike Devine figures out fast that the extraterrestrial’s principal plan is to employ its unfathomable interplanetary muscle and implode the planet. Which leaves the fate of her family, not to mention the world, in her twelve-year-old hands.
Extraterrestrial Noir is a blistering, dark-comic sci-fi crime thriller that disintegrates genre boundaries and opens the floodgates for unputdownable, edge-of-the-seat, laugh-out-loud adventure!
A PSYCHO-CRIMINAL EXTRATERRESTRIAL ON A SUBURBAN CUL-DE-SAC
A FAMILY ON THE BRINK OF ALL-ENCOMPASSING INSOLVENCY
A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD UBERGENIUS DAUGHTER IN THE LINE OF FIRE
CAN SHE SAVE THE FAMILY, NOT TO MENTION THE PLANET?
An extraterrestrial crashes into a suburban cul-de-sac Colonial, absorbs every binary bit of information ever chronicled in all of human history, rearranges its molecules and presents itself as a couple of late and legendary film noir superstars, then immediately displays an appetite for debauchery, depravity, decadence, and destruction, seducing the family into its psychopathic criminal orbit with irresistible Hollywood panache, alluring sexual charisma, and inconceivable intergalactic powers … all in the name of saving the family from their emotional, marital, and financial ruin.
But uber-genius daughter Mike Devine figures out fast that the extraterrestrial’s principal plan is to employ its unfathomable interplanetary muscle and implode the planet. Which leaves the fate of her family, not to mention the world, in her twelve-year-old hands.
Extraterrestrial Noir is a blistering, dark-comic sci-fi crime thriller that disintegrates genre boundaries and opens the floodgates for unputdownable, edge-of-the-seat, laugh-out-loud adventure!
MAYBE AN EXTRAORDINARY INTERVENTION COULD SAVE THEM
Maggie Devine was flat on her back looking up at the sky at two o’clock in the morning. It was Saturday, April 6—the weekend before spring break, meaning day one of nine days in a row of no school. She and her husband and her children were on the front lawn waiting for the meteors, which had not yet arrived. Imagining the meteors might have a mind of their own with regard to the timing of the cosmic event, she thought she’d probably have a minute or two to review her circumstances, to reassess the facts of her life at this moment in time and space—the concrete and the abstract, the physical and the philosophical—before the night was filled with streaks of galactic light.
To accessorize her empirical reexamination, she’d brought a flashlight from the house and was pointing it straight up at the heavens, flicking it on and off, on and off, on and off—dot-dot-dot, dash-dash-dash, dot-dot-dot—mildly conscious that it was an SOS she was shooting into the night, but thinking it was a careless rhythm rather than a message of meaning.
She began with the basics. They were a family of four living in a white Colonial with black shutters on a cul-de-sac in a development where each street was named after an old-time Hollywood hero. Their address was 67 Hope Circle, Paramus, New Jersey, 07652. She was married to Connie Devine. His father had named him after the legendary manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, Connie Mack, not because he was a fan of Philly—he was a New Yorker, and not much of a baseball fan at all—but because he was a haberdasher and admired how Mack, the “grand old man” of the major leagues in the first half of the twentieth century, wore a suit in the dugout.
That was the story Connie had told her when they’d first met at NYU. Connie’s father had wanted his son to sell suits at Devine Clothiers in Manhattan like Connie’s grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, and countless Devine uncles and cousins before him, but Connie went to college instead, where he studied business and met and married Maggie. Together they crossed the George Washington Bridge like it was a honeymoon threshold, took Route 4 to Paramus, bought a small bedding business on Route 17, had two children, and lived the suburban life of Reilly. Until their marriage deflated like a despondent balloon somewhere around five years ago.
Dot-dot-dot, dash-dash-dash, dot-dot-dot.
It hadn’t mattered if Maggie wanted the marriage to deflate or not. The thing had a mind of its own. She’d felt the air leaking out in slow motion for the last half decade, and now it seemed like the truth was she hadn’t wanted, and still didn’t want, to stop it from withering away. Somehow she’d decided to just let it quietly collapse until it was flat and lifeless and she could move somewhere else and be someone else with someone else, though she didn’t know what that meant.
What was once a life full of passion, urgency, excitement, and joy was now one of boredom, melancholy, despair, and dejection. Feelings she kept in the shadows, behind her back, away from the kids, concealed from the neighbors, off the cul-de-sac.
The suburbs can kill you with secrets, she thought.
She felt no anger. Not at Connie. Not at herself. Not at the universe. No animus. No spite. No vindictive nastiness. No smart-ass sniping (at least no more than had always been normal since that first day at NYU). Their unwinding was more of an irreversible, apathetic malaise. She thought it might once have been possible to change the trajectory of their drifting but now thought it was likely too late. She wondered if maybe an extraordinary intervention could save them, but decided there was no intervention extraordinary enough.
The suburbs can kill you with dispassion, she thought.
She and Connie could, of course, only be who they were now, who they’d become. Though she couldn’t articulate the precise cause of their ennui, she knew their dismal financial circumstances had something to do with their world-weary pulling away. Still, their marital dissatisfaction was a symptom of. . .what, exactly?
Lack of heat was the best she could come up with. Her engine was off. Up on blocks. Cold as Canada. There was nothing Connie could do at this point in their melancholic marriage to turn her back on. And she couldn’t do it for him either.
Dot-dot-dot, dash-dash-dash, dot-dot-dot.
Who she’d become was not who she’d been when they’d crossed the George Washington Bridge with sexual energy, blind hope, and big dreams of hand-in-hand happiness for the rest of their days. They’d had heat to spare back then. They’d been bold and daring. Marriage was a risk, and they’d taken it. Buying a bedding business instead of selling suits was a risk, and they’d taken it. Financing everything all at once and all the time was a risk, and they’d taken it.
Let’s go for it was their rallying cry. Let’s go for it.
They’d been daredevils. Reckless risk-takers. Growing Connie’s business faster than was wise. Rashly renovating and redecorating every inch of their house. . .three times. Building a basement featured in Architectural Digest and Sound & Vision. Driving fashionable cars. Scuba diving in Key Largo with the Russells. Skiing in Colorado with the Pagliuccis. Doing Disney right with the Grangers. Keeping up with all the Joneses in Jersey but especially with their neighbors on Hope Circle.
The suburbs can kill you with social climbing, she thought.
Couples didn’t always grow together, Maggie knew, and that was what had happened with her and Connie. Even if they lived the same lives in the same house with the same friends at the same time, the odds were fifty-fifty at best that a couple would grow together. So at least fifty-fifty they would grow apart.
She and Connie had been, and still were, slow to deal with their unraveling marriage, their lack of intimacy, the downward death spiral of their finances, and their lazy lack of desire to rediscover the hunger they used to feel for each other. But they’d have to face facts soon because the meteors were almost here.
The suburbs can kill you with metaphors, she thought.
She was twenty-four when her first child was born, which made her thirty-nine on the front lawn at two thirty in the morning on April 6. Pretty then and pretty now. Eyes the color of coffee. Lovely chestnut-brown hair falling below her shoulders that smelled fresh and fabulous, a blend of sweet orange and eucalyptus, often pulled into a lazy ponytail. Though she was more frequently plucking gray strays, not to mention noticing laugh lines on her forehead, crow’s-feet on her temples, and an ever-so-slight sag of her breasts, she played tennis regularly, used the basement gym a few times a week, ran a mile most mornings—when it wasn’t her turn to drive the cul-de-sac carpool—and so could fill out faded blue jeans and a cotton sweater better than most mothers her age. People often told her she resembled the stunning movie star Keira Knightley, and it was true. Like Knightley, Maggie’s smile was vulnerable and strong at the same time. Like Knightley, Maggie was attractive enough to turn heads at Whole Foods. And like Knightley, Maggie was vibrant enough to kick pirate ass if she needed to, and look sexy as hell while she was doing it. This was yet one more problem with her marriage. Sexually and sensually, she had some damn good years left in her tank and no desire to share them with Connie.
Dot-dot-dot, dash-dash-dash, dot-dot-dot.
She’d married him at twenty-three and, in short order, had given birth to a son and a daughter; folded a lifetime of laundry; pulled piles of weeds; done a ton of grade-school homework; driven to hundreds of soccer practices; learned to cook and make a diorama, play tennis, take a temperature with her wrist, and shoot a foul shot. She’d become Mrs. Connie Devine, wife and mother, busy with homeowners associations, PTA meetings, school dances, yard sales, bake sales, and holiday decorations.
Anyway, she was out here—they were all out here—because Connie had wanted the Devines to experience “the greatest show on earth” as a family. She’d agreed because, despite the late hour, despite her mild headache, and despite everything gone five years flat and sour between her and Connie, they were still the parents of shared children with all the responsibilities and obligations that demanded, and family night with the meteors seemed reasonable. Not to mention, she didn’t have the will to squabble. Mechanical consonance was easier than irritable resistance.
The suburbs can kill you with concession, she thought.
THE BIGGEST THING IN THE UNIVERSE IS THE UNIVERSE
The lawn was cold against Maggie’s neck, and the April air chilled her face and made her nose run. Oh, to be a meteor flashing by and not stuck in the boggy quicksand of the suburbs, she thought.
Dot-dot-dot, dash-dash-dash, dot-dot-dot.
“If we’re the only intelligent life in the universe,” Danny said, “the universe is messed up. And since the universe is messed up, it follows that we’re the only intelligent life in it.”
Maggie’s fifteen-year-old son. A freshman at Paramus High School. Five feet, eight inches, two inches shorter than his father, two inches taller than his mother. Skinny as a stop sign, with long, misbehaving dark-brown hair that hung down over his hazel eyes in a way that made him look like Kurt Cobain, which was intentional, since Cobain was a rock-star idol of his.
“I think there is other intelligent life,” Mike said. “They just haven’t been here yet.”
Maggie’s twelve-year-old daughter. Known throughout her life as Mike because there’d been a mix-up at the hospital when she was born, and Connie and Maggie had somehow thought she was a boy. They’d named her Michael and then changed it to Michelle when the mistake was discovered. Still, Mike stuck. She was a sixth grader at East Brook Middle School on Spring Valley Road. Testing was in the works at East Brook to determine whether or not she was a genius.
There was no need for a test as far as Maggie was concerned.
But Mr. Ulak, Mike’s science teacher, had become suspicious after Mike had scored exactly ninety-two on every quiz, test, and lab assignment he’d given. Further examination of her records showed that Mike had scored ninety-two on everything in every class since the first grade. Being a science teacher, Mr. Ulak reasoned it was an unlikely coincidence, especially since it seemed Mike understood the concepts of chemistry considerably better than he did, and called a meeting with Mrs. Melrose, the head guidance counselor, and Mr. Wartel, the principal. A plan was made to administer an oral exam on Tuesday of spring break, three days from now, to determine the extent of Mike’s genius—if, indeed, she was one.
Maggie had known Mike was a genius since the moment her daughter opened her mouth and formed full sentences at nine months old. She’d chosen not to make a big deal about it. And so, separately, had Mike—both of them reaching the same silent conclusion that nobody liked a genius.
Dot-dot-dot, dash-dash-dash, dot-dot-dot.
“Why not?” Maggie said.
“Because the biggest thing in the universe is the universe,” Mike said.
It wasn’t Mike’s fault, Maggie knew, that she could read like lightning, retain the entirety of whatever she read, comprehend it completely the first time through, and instantaneously process it into common experience and effortless articulation that even her brother could understand.
“That’s obvious,” Danny said.
“Yes,” Mike agreed, “but it’s bigger than you think.”
“Are you talking specifically?” Connie said.
“Yes,” Mike said.
“How big is it?” Maggie said.
“Make the okay sign and hold it up to your eye like this,” Mike said. She connected her thumb and index finger to form a little circle, positioned it eight inches in front of her right eye, and shut her left eye. Maggie, Connie, and Danny made the okay sign like Mike and followed suit.
“What do you see?” Mike said.
“Stars,” Danny answered.
“How many?” Mike said.
“You can’t count them,” Danny said.
“It’s too late to guess, Mike,” Maggie said.
“The meteors will be here any minute,” Connie said.
“The universe is three-dimensional, like the ocean,” Mike said. “It’s not flat. You’re not staring at a piece of space like the cover of a book or a black dinner plate. You’re looking all the way to the end of time, or the beginning of time, actually, to the other side of the universe. Do you know about our solar system?”
“Nine planets orbiting our sun, which is one of the stars in our galaxy, which is called the Milky Way,” Danny said.
“Eight or ten, but not nine,” Mike said.
“Whatever,” Danny said.
“No whatever in science,” Mike said. “Using round numbers, there are one hundred billion stars just like ours in our galaxy, which is pretty much an average-size galaxy, and there are two hundred billion galaxies in the universe. Each of those stars, a hundred billion times two hundred billion, which is twenty trillion billion, can have its own solar system, so even though it’s impossible to believe that, with all those solar systems, we’re the only intelligent life-form in the universe, there are a lot of people like Danny who say that since we haven’t been visited by aliens, aliens don’t exist.”
“You’re proving my point?” Danny said.
Maggie alternated opening and shutting her right and left eyes, thinking about the genius test Ulak, Melrose, and Wartel were even now assembling for her daughter, wondering how they would react when Mike scored an even ninety-two on their exam.
“No,” Mike said.
“Then what point are you proving?” Maggie said.
Dot-dot-dot, dash-dash-dash, dot-dot-dot.
“That even with all those stars and planets and solar systems and galaxies, most of the universe, by far, is empty space that takes all of eternity to cross,” Mike said. “It’s just as likely they simply haven’t found us yet and probably never will.”
They still held their okay signs over their right eyes, looking up at the sky.
“How many stars in the circle, Mike?” Connie said.
“About a billion galaxies all the way back to the big bang. A hundred billion billion stars,” Mike said.
“Now I see them,” Connie said. “Anybody else?”
“Definitely. All of them,” Danny said.
Maggie discontinued her finger circle and lay quietly, letting the sounds and smells of the suburban night wash over her: a dog barking in a backyard several streets away; automatic sprinklers clicking like metronomes; the faint, distant, whirring drone of cars and trucks on Routes 4 and 17. The sharp smell of fresh-mowed grass mixed with the pungent, ever-present background aroma of car fumes and lawn mower diesel and charcoal lighter fluid somehow softened and oddly sweetened by the scent of American holly and silver bell and hazel alder and black spruce and red oak (trees thoughtfully planted decades ago by the developer).
She was thinking about what Mike had said about the universe taking all of eternity to cross and that the insurmountable vastness of time and distance was the reason alien life-forms hadn’t yet arrived on Earth. “How long would it take? In Earth years.”
“What?” Mike said.
“For them to get here,” Maggie said.
“Who?” Connie said.
“Anyone who wanted to come,” Maggie said. “How long would it take them?”
“Depends on if there’s traffic,” Danny said.
“Do you know about light-years?” Mike said.
“How far light travels in a year?” Maggie answered.
“Yes,” Mike said. “When you look at the sun, you don’t see it as it is in the moment you see it. You see it as it was eight or so minutes ago, because that’s how long it took the light to travel to you. That’s called the speed of light.”
“Something like a hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second,” Connie said.
“In a vacuum, yes,” Mike said. “Very good, Daddy.”
“I’m a CEO, angel,” Connie said. “I know some things.”
“You sell bedding, Con,” Maggie said. “You know mattresses.”
“That’s almost six trillion miles per year—a single light-year,” Mike said.
“So, if they travel at light speed, they should be here pretty soon,” Maggie said.
“Better make extra pancakes,” Connie said.
“That’s lame, Dad,” Danny said.
“It’s witty, son,” Connie said. “You’ll understand when you get older.”
“I hope not,” Danny said.
“Not too soon,” Mike said. “The distance from Earth to the edge of the universe in any direction takes forty-six point five gigalight-years.”
“How many light years in a gigalight-year?” Connie said.
“A billion,” Mike said.
“What does that mean in Earth years?” Maggie said.
“Voyager 1, our most distant space probe, traveled fourteen light-hours, not even one light-day, and that took thirty Earth years. So, it would take about twenty-two thousand Earth years to travel the same distance light travels in one light-year. About one quadrillion and one hundred two trillion Earth years to reach the edge of the universe.”
If that’s a question on the genius test, I wonder which part of the light-speed equation Mike will only get ninety-two percent right, Maggie thought.
“What if they were coming from the closest galaxy?” Maggie said.
“Andromeda,” Mike said. “Twenty-five hundred Earth years.”
“Long time,” Maggie said, and she turned off her flashlight.
“The meteors should have been here by now,” Connie said.
“I saw something up there,” Maggie said.
But something up there had seen her and made a sharp turn toward Earth.
Extraterrestrial Noir by Rich Leder is a wildly imaginative dark comedy about the deep secrets held by those living in the suburbs. Leder doesn’t simply blend genres; he stuffs them in a blender and mixes on high. What came out was a chaotic cul-de-sac drama with a science fiction of an alien contact story mashed with a cinematic noir that would make Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake proud. Leder assembled an absurd cast of vividly imperfect players in this fast-paced, madcap, character-driven Noir.
Leder puts a modern twist on the classic cinematic Noir. Instead of the darkened alleys and gritty streets, Leder sets his novel in the suburban paradise of Paramus, NJ, on Hope Circle, complete with backyard swimming pools and automatic sprinklers. Besides the sultry blonde, Veronica Lake, the femme fatales are the emotionally complex neighborhood moms who play tennis and sip wine. The grizzled private eye is played by a middle-aged dad with a failing mattress business who mows his lawn on the weekend and drives a Mercedes Coup with costume plates. Cynical monologues are delivered by a precocious 12-year-old genius who is the smartest in the room. The fatalism and moral ambiguity are still present, filtered through satire and domestic collapse. And don’t forget about the diamond heist. Every great Noir includes a diamond heist.
Extraterrestrial Noir is classic science fiction in the most absurd way possible. It is a classic noir set in the suburbs. It is also a dark comedy with snarky and razor-sharp dialogue and philosophical undertones. Think Christopher Moore meets Kirk Vonnegut. Leder’s novel is hairbrained and ludicrous, unique and brilliant. It is ideal for readers who enjoy philosophical chaos or those who take their humor with a side of existential dread. This book is perfect for those who want to laugh, think, and occasionally scream into the void—preferably while sipping wine on a suburban lawn under a meteor shower.