As a big fan of Preston and Child, I eagerly awaited this final installment of the Pendergast trilogy. Its predecessors were very entertaining and provided a great setup for a knockout finale. However, the payoffs seem overly contrived and the writing here seemed a bit self-indulgent as the ending to this book should have come about 30-35 pages earlier. I have read nearly all of the Preston-Child books and would recommend most of them. However, this was one of my least favorites.