Rating: 
Summary: More loose ends than a bowl of spaghetti.
Review: Why one star? Funny, if a book is so terrible that I can tell it's junk from the first paragraph, I don't mind. I'll just put it down and pick up another book. For me, the worst books are the ones that have just enough narrative drive to keep you turning the page, yet fail to deliver at every single turn.That's how it was with this book; I liked the opening--I really did! Repairman Jack's purchase of a 'new' Daddy Warbucks lamp and his difficulty finding a place for it amidst all the assorted junk of his apartment was a great bit of characterization--enough to hook me. Where to begin... how about the ending? (No, this is not a spoiler. Read on.) The climax was straight Perils of Pauline. It reminded me of the climax to a story I wrote in third grade, in which an electric car crashes, and the combined vacuum from all the cracked vacuum tubes (yes, I was in third grade that long ago)sucks our hero towards his doom. Yes, that bad--my third grade story and this one. And _Conspiracies_' climax is followed in short order by a deus ex machina resolution (non-resolution, really) that had no set-up at any point earlier in the novel. Then, serving to underline all the loose ends in the novel, Repairman Jack thinks over all the many questions which are still unanswered. Aaargh! The premise is very promising: Jack is hired to find a missing wife; turns out she's a conspiracy theorist, and to track her down Jack must attend a convention of conspiracy theorists and masquerade as one of their number. Great set-up, but in my opinion F. Paul Wilson fails to deliver. The amount of research that went into this story, I suspect, could be achieved with a Yahoo search for 'conspiracy' and about thirty minutes of free time. There are also several long-winded bits of padding, worst of all: Jack's interminable discussions with his best-male-friend-in-the-world Abe Grossman, who (guess the religious/ethnic stereotype) says stuff like, "Nu? You next look where for this missing lady?" Finally, one wonders if the editor was asleep, allowing numerous misspellings, and even (page 311): "The One watched the hole in rapt fascination, only vaguely barely aware of the struggle..." etc. Vaguely barely? And how about the Sunday Schedule of Events, which appears on the terminal page; was this misplaced as an editorial oversight (that's my vote), or is there some sort of deeper meaning here? Bottom line, this is more than just a sequel to _The Tomb_; it's a shameless commercial for the earlier book.
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