It started out as a decent police procedural, set in China. The formula is overdone, but the characters are decent. However, the book somehow morphed into a Michael Crichton end-of-the-world thriller in the last chapters. This is one of the first books by the author, and there is a substantial body of work to read now. I'm hoping that in his later works he stuck to what he was good at, and left the rest behind.