I liked his first books, fat easy books for under-the-sun beach reading. And he looked like he researched and knew his stuff. Then I stumbled upon "Balance of Power", set up here in Spain, and, man, this guy hadn't even got a map to see where we were. It caused quite a ruckus on the press, because the plot went from the hilarious to the downright insulting.
I don't quite remember it in detail but images of a badly put together Sicilian Mafia tale with wrongly spelled Spanish politician names randomly assigned to the various padrinos come to mind.