One of the dumbest books I've ever read

I think this is actually the dumbest book I've ever read but that might be just because I just threw it down in disgust. I'd gotten almost to the very end of the book when I did that. I don't like to give up on a book unless it's just awful. About a third of the way through the book I'd resigned myself to a dumb thriller story and was going to power through it as best as I can. It just got so thoroughly stupid I couldn't do it. Oh. The name of the book is The Sign and it was written by Raymond Khoury. I looked it up on Amazon to see what other readers thought of it and it seems like the reviewers thought it was a good book. Well, we all have different tastes and mine definitely is not for this genre. I picked the book up at a library sale. When I read the back cover I didn't recognize it as a thriller. I believed it was a mystery and I was interested in finding out what this supernatural "sign" was all about. The story opens with the apparent death of a young man who was working on some type of project. I got my first clue that this might be a ridiculous book when I read that a military type just started shooting down members of the project for no rational reason. Two years later, a blazing sphere appears above the Antarctic. What is it? It doesn't seem to be manmade, a projected hologram or anything like that. It appears just as a glacier has begun majorly melting. Not long after, it also appears over the Arctic by another melting glacier. Is this a sign, a warning about global warming? I was intrigued enough with this mystery to keep reading. There's a big cast of characters and I found it annoying trying to remember who was who. The main character is Matt, older brother of the scientist in that first scene. Matt is trying to find out what happened to his brother. Someone who knew the brother contacts Matt and tries to pass him a message...but then a squad of goons show up to kidnap them both. Now, if Matt had been ex-military or a cop or something like that, I would have believed how easily he fought off his characters. He then goes on a wild adventure, seemingly an expert at handling cars, guns, and all kinds of jams. Please. Still, I stuck it out until almost the end when a reporter figures out what's really going on and who is involved. Of course, she's the next one that is grabbed by the goon squad and has to be rescued. That just asked me to suspend too much belief. No way would I believe that goon squads would run around kidnapping or killing prominent figures. I know I'm supposed to suspend belief in reality on these types of books and just accept regular people will be put in these situations and somehow know what to do to get themselves out of it. I know there's no character development and it's all melodrama. I just don't care for it. I'm sorry I read as far as I did.