NEW YORK: Could 1514 AD be just an important date in the age of Leonardo, Machiavelli and Copernicus? Is Eight Franklin Square just the address of another nondescript building in northwest Washington, DC?
Neither are what they seem in Dan Brown's new thriller, The Lost Symbol, released Tuesday, a roaring ride filled with the hairpin plot turns and twisty roads that made The Da Vinci Code one of the most popular books of all time.
As with The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, do not expect pages of inspired prose or even an unpredictable ending. Instead, just ride it out and have fun with a caper filled with puzzles, grids, symbols, pyramids and a secret that can bestow “unfathomable power”.
Robert Langdon – Brown's alter ego and the Harvard professor of symbology who first appeared in Angels & Demons and led readers on a dangerous romp through Paris in The Da Vinci Code – is invited at the last minute by his friend Peter Solomon (secretary of the Smithsonian) to give a speech at the National Statuary Hall.
He jets down to DC in a Falcon 2000EX and dashes into the hall only to find it empty. A call to Solomon's office puts Langdon in touch with the person who set up the ruse - a bald, tattooed massive baddie named Mal'akh, who has kidnapped Solomon and left his severed right hand (decorated with tiny tats and a Masonic ring) on the floor of the Capitol Rotunda.
“Langdon tried to process this. 'What do you want from me?'
“'It's simple. You have been given access to something quite ancient. And tonight, you will share it with me.'”
The page almost ripples with a cartoonish heh, heh, heh.
Unlike the demented passion of the almost comical albino monk in The Da Vinci Code, Mal'akh is a more insidious evil with a bulging ego that helps him slip easily through the watchdogs of Homeland Security and keep the plot rolling for more than 400 pages. What might unnerve some readers is that he is able to get past these keepers of safety with only a little makeup to cover his tattoos and costumes that should make even a rookie cop a little suspicious.
The sought-after secret is cloaked in the mysteries of the Masons: Langdon must hunt for a Masonic pyramid that holds the code to an ancient power. His search takes him on a DC tour, to the Capitol, the Washington National Cathedral, the Botanic Garden, the Washington Monument and the Library of Congress.
The Lost Symbol, which has an announced first printing of five million copies, is not the first thriller to weave the Masons into a plot – Brown did so in Angels & Demons and Brad Meltzer has Masonic references in Book of Fate. But Brown was clever nonetheless in choosing the Masonic Order to centre his book around. It is a fraternal society steeped in history, mystery and ritual, one that has claimed as members some of history's most influential men: Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Mozart and Teddy Roosevelt, among others.
Brown spent time in Washington and at a Masonic museum in Alexandria, Va., to help in the writing of his novel. His interpretation of Mason lore folds seamlessly into the plot.
“Beneath the inscription, Mal'akh now saw something that stunned him. The capstone seemed to be glowing. In disbelief, he stared at the faintly radiant text and realized that the legend was literally true: The Masonic pyramid transforms itself to reveal its secret to the worthy.”
Solomon comes from a family of Masons. His sister, Katherine, is a scientist whose lab is housed in a massive pod in a huge warehouse outside Washington that stores the bulk of the Smithsonian's holdings. Her work in noetics - sciences that explore the mind and how it relates to the physical world - will likely cause a surge in the study of this arcane area. “Human thought can literally transform the physical world,” Brown writes.
Katherine, of course, teams up with Langdon to save Peter and solve the puzzle. She provides Langdon with a female foil and intellectual sparring partner. They make a terrific team, trading clues with ease like an old married couple.
Brown has the usual potpourri of weird and fumbling bureaucrats, including a strident CIA gnome named Sato, who heads the Office of Security, and proudly wears the scars of throat cancer.
And Brown charges to the end of the tale at a breathless pace that only crawls when he feeds us too much Masonic history or tries to seduce us to the mysteries of noetics. The ending does not startle: It is almost predictable. But the journey is very cool.