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superficial and sloppy, an insult to readers I'll concede this to Dan Brown and his fans: Angels and Demons is a page-turner, but the writer's heavy-handed foreshadowing quickly becomes irritating. In addition, the book is sloppy. Mr. Brown's Italian is atrocious. I believe that he also handles the "truth" he mixes into his fiction with the same lack of precision. There are errors in about half of the Italian phrases he throws in for, I presume, authenticity. Is Mr. Brown too arrogant to ask an Italian to proof-read it? Or is he in a rush to publish and get the money rolling in. But linguistic inaccuracy and clumsy page-turner techniques are minor irritations. The book is simply badly written. The characters are two-dimensional. They do not live on in the mind like the characters of great novels. The reader is supposed to accept at one point that the cameralengo is a truly godly man with great spiritual insight. He disposes with the problem of omnipotence and benevolence-the most puzzling question at the heart of most religions-quite simply and, we are to believe, brilliantly. He compares God to a loving father who lets his child skateboard even though he might fall and skin his knees. God allows us pain so that we will learn. And this is the great spiritual maturity that makes this priest the closest man to the Pope? What is the child who is raped at the age of 2 supposed to "learn" from God by this experience? What are starving people to "learn" before they die of starvation? Do all the poor, starving, sick people all over the world need to learn more than we do...more than a wildly successful novelist needs to learn from God? OK, I know it isn't a theological work, it's a mystery novel. But Mr. Brown shouldn't address the big themes if he can only do so in such a pathetic way. It's an insult to the reader. What a contrast between this book and the last one that I read: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. Delightful and deceptively simple, I thoroughly enjoyed it and feel that Precious Ramotswe is a living, breathing, big, beautiful African woman. Reading that book was like eating a fine meal...very satisfying. Reading Angels and Demons was more like consuming an entire can of Cheese Whiz.