I really should get credit for reading two separate books. One storyline involved the creation of a whiz-bang virtual reality "Cavern" by a well-funded lab in the Pacific Northwest. The other story focused on the kidnapping of an American in Lebanon.

I found the speechifying by the VR programmers to be unrealistic and rather dull.

The kidnapping saga generally held my interest but towards the end, I found myself skipping sections.

The two storylines do eventually come together, barely, in a science fictiony way that was an unconvincing jolt from the previous 400 realistic pages.