I won't get fooled again

At the library, I picked up John Darnton's Darwin Conspiracy thanks to a comparison to both Michael Chrichton and Ian McEwan. Later , flipping open the cover I saw he also wrote the horrendous Neanderthal, which concludes with the baddies being defeated by.....a boombox playing "Born in the USA," which apparently scares them back into their caves. Really, I swear. The reviews of the Darwin book are pretty mixed. I rather like the CS Monitor's put-down "...But as it is, however, the book is not burdened with too much substance." I fear that, like horror, the thriller genre is plagued by silliness.