I generally like Dan Simmons' horror novels, so when I saw this mentioned on an SF forum I thought, oh something different, and put it on my list. Within a couple pages I realized I'd read it before. I didn't have any negative memories attached to it and I'm temporarily mobility-challenged, much trouble to get back up so what the heck Oops.
I don't know if Simmons was trying to be funny or not. On the surface, it's an action thriller with the hero investigator being chased by the Russian mafia, trying to bring them to justice. There's the usual sexual tension thing with an attractive FBI agent. But an awful lot of this is Simmons re-telling anecdotes from the Darwin Awards and putting the protagonist at the center of the investigations. There are excruciatingly long descriptions of various gun specifications, car engines, speed calculations, how to fly a glider. There are three pages with equations about the physics of an accident! And long quotes from Stoic philosophers...omg just shoot me. I did like the dogfight between the helicopter and the glider. I liked Larry (Lawrence) and the framework of the plot - the insurance fraud - that was good. I don't have a clue why I persevered, I did get up a couple times while reading so I could have found something else. I can't recommend it but I think big fans of Tom Clancy (or whoever took his place) would like it better.
