Copyright 2013 by Dan Brown. Published by Anchor Books, a division of Random House LLC.
This is the 4th book featuring Robert Langdon, the Harvard professor and expert in medieval symbols, the most famous being The DaVinci Code. The plot in this one is centered on a brilliant genetic scientist who is a big fan of Dante’s Divine Comedy and believes that the human race is on the brink of extinction due to overpopulation. His solution is to concoct a new plague that will “thin the herd.” He wants to kill a third of the people on earth.
Initially Langdon’s role in thwarting this plot is unknown as he is, at the outset, suffering from amnesia. He wakes up in a hospital room in Florence, Italy, with no recollection of the three days prior. He remembers nothing after an evening walk across Harvard Yard. He is apparently is involved in something serious as shortly after he regains consciousness a young woman shoots her way into his hospital room, killing a doctor. Langdon barely escapes with his life in the company of another doctor, a young American named Sienna Brooks.
What follows is an epic chase, through Florence, Venice and Istanbul, with Langdon barely escaping numerous times from a black-clad group of assassins who are just one step behind. This book has been made into a movie, apparently, and I can only imagine that it is one long, non-stop chase scene.
My objection to the book, initially, was that the chase was implausible. A Harvard professor and a doctor successfully eluding a large team of assassins? My other objection was that it reads like a chase scene through a Fodor travel book. The chase visits all the great tourist sites of all three cities. Yes, it did make me more interested in visiting all three cities, but great tourism seems tangential to a plot to kill billions. My feeling, halfway through, was that Dan Brown must have been able to take some very long vacations in Europe and write it all off as “research.”
So two-thirds of the way through, my opinion of the book wasn’t very high. But he saved up the best for the last third of the book. Nothing is quite what it seems. Unraveling what is going on – and who the bad guys are – becomes very engrossing. He is a fine storyteller and he kept me guessing in this one.
After finishing the book I am left with just one complaint: that Langdon, despite being central to the plot, really doesn’t do anything to affect the outcome. The result would have been the same if Langdon had never left Harvard. But, still, the book was well-written and very thought-provoking.
8 out of 10.