Dan Brown's body lies a-molderin' on my shelf...

Hi gang. Not sure if this will be of any interest to the group, but I've
been having a "Dan Brown fest" over the holidays, and thought you might
like a brief review and opinion of the books. He's only written four to
date, so it doesn't take long to go through his entire corpus (Hence the
title... Dan Brown's body... Geddit?... Hyuk!) Aaaanyhoo, for them that's
interested, more follows after suitable spoiler space...

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The books...

I started reading "Angels and Demons" just before Christmas. Luckily, as
it turns out, because this is a prequel to "The Da Vinci Code"; although
the two books are pretty much stand-alone novels, TDVC makes several
references to A&D which don't make much sense unless you've read A&D
first. While the college of cardinals meets in Rome to elect a new Pope,
a bomb is ticking away hidden somewhere in Vatican City, and threatens to
blow the Vatican off the map, taking the upper Catholic heirarchy with it.
This is a close contender for Brown's best book; intense, fast-paced
action that really bowls along as the bomb ticks away. A real
page-turner, I couldn't put it down until I'd finished it.

Next on my reading list was The Da Vinci Code. A mysterious secret
society has been successfully guarding a hidden truth since the
middle ages. A Catholic prelature, Opus Dei, opposes them and seeks
the information. The protagonist's struggle begins when they're
caught in the middle of this conflict following the murder of the
curator of the Louvre Museum. You've probably seen the movie by now (I
haven't yet, so I don't know how it compares with the book) Although
enjoyable in its own right, I found it a slight let-down after Angels &
Demons. Very similar in plot and style, but lacking the pace and tension
of the former book, it seems to plod along in places. I'm not saying it's
a *bad* book by any means; I found them all enjoyable in their own right,
but it's just not *quite* as good as A&D.

"Deception Point" is probably his weakest novel, though again I must
hasten to add, not a bad book by any means. A mysterious object is found
buried in the arctic ice... is it what it seems? Well, obviously not,
since the book's title gives the game away even before you even read the
first page, but the real plot of the novel is - will the protagonists
escape with the truth before being wiped out by a hit squad determined to
keep the secret under wraps? Here's where my suspension of disbelief hit
a brick wall - A squad of Delta Force operatives, the most ruthless and
professional killers in the world, being bested by a bunch of geeky
scientists. The convenient helicopter rescue towards the end of the novel
was just a bit too convenient as well, IMHO, although I had to laugh when
the real identity of the Delta Force "controller" was revealed. By clever
use of neutral pronouns, you are led to believe the controller is someone
else entirely, and the revelation of their true identity comes as quite a
surprise. At least it did to me. Maybe I'm just thick.

"Digital Fortress" was Brown's first novel, and in some ways his best. I
just finished it last night, and like "Angels & Demons", couldn't put it
down until I'd got to the end. The NSA's code-cracking supercomputer
comes up against a code it can't crack... or does it? The race is on to
find the key to the code before America's entire secret database is laid
bare to any and every computer user with network access. About
three-quarters of the way through the novel, it seems to be approaching a
conclusion, and you begin to wonder what all the extra pages are for, but
then the pace really picks up and the story fairly hurtles towards the
conclusion. Great fun, and highly recommended.

So there you go. If you had to choose one Dan Brown novel to read, it
would be a toss-up between "Digital Fortress" and "Angels and Demons". If
you prefer your action/adventure/mystery novels a touch on the high-tech
side go for the former; if you prefer more of a medieval puzzle solving
slant, the latter's for you. If anyone else in the group has already read
any of Brown's work, I'd love to hear if your own opinions coincide with
mine.

Next up for me - Lev Grossman's "Codex". (A long lost library... A
priceless medieval manuscript... A deadly secret...) Yum!

Cheers,
Pete.

On 1/9/07 5:59 AM, in article Pine.GSO.4.60.0701090933210.6817@squire, "Pete
Wilcox" <pw2 DeleteThis @st-andrews.ac.uk> wrote:

> "Digital Fortress

Thanks for the heads up on this book. It just so happens to be on the shelf
at a library up the road. I was going there anyway, so bonus.

jodelli