Reading a hi-tech thriller from 9 years ago

I read Digital Fortress this week - nine years after it was first published. So it felt outdated. ;)

Why? The technology in it didn't sound hi-tech. Also, Dan Brown had included what sounded like a lot of needless mumbo-jumbo. Much like in Angels and Demons.

I'm not sure I like to be ahead of the author - figuring out who the bad guy is, who would get killed, what was a red herring etc.

Toward the end, even I was solving 'codes' within messages ahead of the chief protagonist. She and the others took six pages to figure out the final pass code.

*Wink*wink*. Small victories.