We want to believe: A different kind of UFO lands in Holden Beach writer's 'Azalea Bluff'
Brunswick County is being invaded in "Azalea Bluff," a new thriller by Holden Beach resident Dennis Hetzel. This time, though, it's not Little Green Men, or Little Gray Men either.
As our story opens, Something has crashed, or landed, on the campus of Brinkley High School near Azalea Bluff, a fictional town with some resemblance to Shallotte.
Soon, authorities have blocked traffic for miles. The Department of Homeland Security has declared a D819-B, a super-version of martial law. Phones and radios aren't working.
Olivia Claven, the founder and editor of a Brunswick County news website, is trying to slip in the back way to see what's going on. She spots the Something: Is it a giant acorn or is it shaped like a bell?
And then she vanishes.
Much of the rest of the book follows frantic efforts by the Brunswick County sheriff, a hot-shot private eye with Fox Mulder tendencies, Olivia's father and others to find out where she went.
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Readers, however, know where Olivia is. Apparently, she's Seen Too Much, so she's being held in a locked, windowless room with no human contact in Area 51 or someplace much like it.
Oh, the Something at Brinkley High? Authorities explain it as a crashed plane carrying toxic chemicals for national security. Or was it?
Hetzel, the author of "Season of Lies" and "Killing the Curse," has set himself a problem. He's writing a thriller, but one in which the protagonist spends more than 100 pages locked in the equivalent of a budget motel with lousy room service. After a "Close Encounters" opening, the plot seems to idle for more than a few chapters.
But Hetzel deserves points for originality, or at least for knowing good ideas when he sees them. He adapted his novel from a radio drama by Charlotte broadcaster Ed Galloway, who unfortunately died before the novel was finished.
Without dropping too many spoilers, "Azalea Bluff" is a flying saucer yarn without the conventional flying saucers or space aliens. Instead, we get a puree of Ancient Astronauts, secret Nazi bases in Antarctica and a touch of Doctor Who, told against a sort of "X-Files" background. (This is an "X-Files," though, in which The Cigarette Smoking Man actually turns out to be a pretty nice guy.)
Behind all this is the assumption that The Truth is Out There — but that our government, for various reasons, has decided we can't handle the truth.
Is that the case?
University of North Carolina Wilmington religion professor Diana Pasulka, in her 2019 book "American Cosmic," pointed out that more than half of all Americans, and more than 60 percent of young ones, are convinced that intelligent life exists on other planets. Indeed, Pasulka argues, UFO-ology has become, in effect, a modern religious faith. As the poster says, we want to believe.
Would millions really panic or riot if mainstream media began reporting a starship landing? Or would there be celebration?
In any event, for all its flaws, "Azalea Bluff' provides hours of amusing diversion.
Ben Steelman can be reached at 910-616-1788 or peacebsteelman@gmail.com.
BOOK REVIEW
'AZALEA BLUFF'
By Dennis Hetzel, with Ed Galloway
Terra Alta, W.Va: Headline Books, $19.95 paperback