content: The alternate title of this book should have been "HOW TO AFFECT AN AIR OF SOPHISTICATION AND URBANITY IN SEVERAL HUNDRED PAGES OF PLODDING AND FRANKLY UNBELIEVABLE PLOTTING COUPLED WITH TWO DIMENSIONAL STEREOTYPES SO PREDICTABLE IN THEIR PRETENTIOUS MUSINGS".An overly long title you might opine but surely not in light of the success of two such eloquent and verbose authors. I had hopes for these two having started with "Cabinet of Curiosities". Their subsequent offerings flagged sequentially but I retained hope for latent talent. Then this? This self-indulgent, conceited tome demonstrated a predisposition not unlike that so manifestly exhibited by the socially-upward-mobile.I am so saddened to see that some of the most lauded exponents of modern popular fiction are the likes of Messrs. Preston and Child and perhaps the worst offender of all, Dan Brown.