Down in my building's laundry room is a place where people can leave the books they're getting rid of, and since I'd seen the movie of the first book I grabbed this one, not knowing where it fell in the trilogy.

It falls third, and it became obvious early on that like a lot of mid-trilogy books, the book right before this one had ended on a cliffhanger.

Because of this, the book is full of references to things you should know about, and answers to questions I didn't have. And I want to mention that up front, because reading the third book without the context of the second is not going to be the best experience with a book like this.

In spite of being a bit puzzled, I figured I would read through and once the explanations were out of the way and they started introducing new characters and plot elements I could still enjoy it. But I didn't.

First off, it is a poorly written book. I don't know if the original is badly written or if it's just a bad translation, but there are moments so out of tune and awkward as to be slightly embarrassing. It's not wretched, like a romance novel, but the writing is certainly poor.

Characters are uninteresting and poorly drawn. But perhaps they were all drawn in the first book and the author is just being lazy.

What finally stopped me reading it was an almost OCD obsession with details. The book wants to explain exactly what everyone is doing and thinking. Sometimes that's somewhat interesting, as when you follow the lead woman's thought process as she plans for eventualities, but sometimes it's painful, as in a long, tedious section in which the bad guys plan out their strategy in excruciating detail.

As I say, if I'd read the second book I would probably have found more of interest in the third, but if the flaws of the third book are the same in the second, I never would have read that one either. I'll just stick to the movies.