I was a little annoyed occasionally. Not so much because it was too neat. It was rather that it seemed to try to be neat without managing. Or, rather, the neatness was all predictable. Hmm. I am not sure whether I am explaining this right.

I was annoyed that he included that whole long trip into the 1680s, for example, only in order to provide an explanation to a "mystery" that he set up to answer. While I generally have no objection to the box within a box style of narrative, I tend to prefer it when there is at least a pretence at some service to the wider narrative.

And after that he promptly forgot about the usefulness of the chain around the ankle. Why?

And Doyle, on the whole, annoyed me with his dimness. He kept lagging behind the point when things were obvious. It got annoying. I don't like dim protagonists.

And I would have liked the whole mystical stuff to be explored to a greater extent. It tended to drown in action scenes that seemed to be written for film.

BUT. I did generally approve. I liked the idea of it very much. And I liked how it used all those Egyptian myths that fascinated the founders of all those secret societies at the time.