In college, we used to go out and get the cheapest beer possible. This was often Rolling Rock or Tuborg in reusable bottles (a novelty in the US), the more scratched up the better. These beers, and the movie we usually rented with them, were so bad, they were good. Reading a Matthew Reilly thriller is about the same, with the same sense of satisfaction and escape as a case of cheap cold beer and a bad movie. So bad, its good. I started with Ice Station, then moved on to Contest, Temple and the Seven Ancient Wonders before I just finished The Six Sacred Stones this week. The books run around 600 pages each and are non-stop thrillers with one last second escape following another. I can attest to their value as a great escape, having read the last one in a single day. Then the son of a bitch left it as a cliffhanger. Many of his ideas seem to originate in the realm of what I will call "new archaeology," represented by the likes of Graham Hancock, and Baigent/Leigh/Lincoln's Holy Blood, Holy Grail. I have not read Hancock's The Sign and the Seal about the Ark of the Covenant, but I saw his fascinating show about it on the Discovery Channel a few years ago. His research claims that the Ark worked as a giant capacitor, and can be found in Ethiopia.