“Skeletons in the Closet” (November 2002), the fifth book in the “Roswell” tie-in series, is the best entry so far even though it’s arguably the least plot-heavy book. By digging into the question of the alien teens’ origin, Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin remind us of how sketchily drawn the TV series’ backstory is. While “Skeletons” doesn’t expand the mythology all that much, it clarifies it quite a bit.
No longer anonymous donors
In the Laurie Dupree quadrilogy of Season 2, we learn that Michael’s unwilling human DNA donor is a now-deceased man named Charles Dupree. In “Skeletons,” Mangels and Martin pick up the baton and reveal the donors of Max, Isabel and Tess. In the latter case, we meet the woman, a now-60-something Santa Fe science professor named Jolene Skarrstin.
I appreciate how the authors begin to clarify the timeline of the aliens’ arrival and creation of the eight human-alien hybrids (the four we know, plus their duplicates in New York).
“Skeletons in the Closet” (2002)
Authors: Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin
Series: “Roswell” No. 5
Setting: Summer after Season 2
In flashbacks from child Jolene’s POV – plus that of newlyweds Darryl and Christine Morton (Max’s and Isabel’s donors) – we learn that an alien ship landed in January 1947 (six months before the famous crash), abducted the four humans and did the experiments and DNA gathering that leads to the creation of the eight hybrids.
It also leads to the abductees gaining alien-like traits, as we already knew from Laurie, who acquires certain traits via her grandfather.
The abduction scenes are standard alien-abduction lore, complete with probes and all the clichés, but they are well written. And we had never seen this on “Roswell,” so it makes sense to add it to the mythology.
Showdown with alterna-Tess
The authors write an engaging showdown between Skarrstin and protagonists Max, Isabel and Kyle. The teens are hesitant because this woman looks like an older Tess (“Skeletons” is set in the summer after Season 2, soon after Tess flees to Antar), and Skarrstin fears the teens because they look like her fellow abductees, unaged from 1947.
It’s questionable that Max and Isabel are so eager to invite Skarrstin into the “I know an alien” club, but on the other hand, I suppose it’s a fair tradeoff for gaining a direct source of information about their origin.
They don’t learn all that much from Skarrstin beyond her abduction experience, but they had no way of knowing that when they set out on the quest for information.
Picking up the murder mystery
“Skeletons’ ” other thread springs from Nasedo’s killing of Hank Whitmore, Michael’s foster father, at the end of “Independence Day” (1.15). Considering this, it’s a shame that the 1947 flashbacks don’t include Nasedo.
Was he on the January 1947 ship that had the mission of abducting the four humans? Was he on the more famous July 1947 ship that crashes? He may or may not have been, but he’s not in the flashbacks here.
Sheriff Hanson suspects Michael is the murderer of Hank, whose bones are found in the desert (by two of Michael’s future Meta-Chem colleagues, in a fun bit of continuity). Michael’s case isn’t all that dramatic on the surface – there’s no solid evidence against him, since Nasedo is the killer – but spending a night in jail is nothing to sneeze at.
It’s capped by a great sequence where Jim Valenti serves as a character witness for Michael and speaks to the judge about how he is proud to know the young man. Jim’s grilling from Hanson and other authority figures is a repeat of what he goes through in Season 2, when he ultimately gets fired from the sheriff job.
It certainly feels “Roswell”-ian, though, and since he’s no longer employed, Jim can cut loose on his questioners, which is fun to see.
Making room for Jesse
I mentioned in my review of “Shades” that I’m not thrilled with Jesse being in these pre-Season 3 stories, but Mangels and Martin almost change my mind. When Jesse speaks to the judge in Michael’s defense, I can hear Adam Rodriguez delivering the words.
Jesse is an important No. 2 man in Phillip Evans’ law office, and while he’s secretly seeing Isabel, the authors don’t go so far that he becomes part of the gang sooner than the timeline calls for.
The authors struggle with Maria, who calls Max “Maxwell” a couple times (I feel like only Michael should call him that). But they do good work with everyone else, especially Michael (a favorite of all the book authors so far) and Valenti.
By the way, Valenti is dating Amy in this story, as he does in Season 2. The authors describe it as an on-again, off-again relationship, but it’ll be interesting to see if a future novel chronicles them splitting up, thus explaining why Amy is not part of Jim’s life in Season 3. (The real-world reason is that Diane Farr had become a regular on the Denis Leary series “The Job.”)
I hope future books build on what Mangels and Martin lay down in “Skeletons in the Closet” — the reveal of the identities of the three other donors – by giving us more specifics about Nasedo’s involvement in the 1947 events. It’d be nice, too, if an engaging plot could be built around those events. For now, at least it’s nice to fill in more “Roswell” timeline details.