Reply #9: Except that instead being full of annoyingly idiotic history,

[cemaphonic]

it's full of annoyingly idiotic history AND science. Then there's the Illuminati. Aside from being a pretty banal and derivative choice as secret societies go(I mean, c'mon they have a popular board game based on them), you should at least start with the historical framework of the actual Illuminati instead of just making shit up. Oh yeah, and the trying to drown someone in a fountain that is about two feet deep max, and surrounded by huge crowds at all times.

Plus the main suspense plot hinged on the supposed impossibility of locating the source of a constant radio transmission of known frequency. Maybe that's why the Italians lost WWII, although you would think that they would have worked it out eventually.

I'm all for willing suspension of disbelief, and pretty tolerant of goofy science and history in fiction, but the near constant assault of gross factual errors shattered it to pieces, and he compounded it by making the protagonists supposed world-class experts in these subjects. And he can't write. Dean Koontz is probably a better prose stylist than he is.