'Inferno'

Dan Brown

Publisher: Bantam Press / 2013

Pages: 461

When last year I reviewed Dan Brown's Origin I had remarked that the book could be read as a travelogue describing the sights and sounds of three cities in Spain - Bilbao, Barcelona and Madrid.

In the book I am reviewing today, the fourth in the Robert Langdon series, the same author gives us a riveting travelogue centred around three cities - Florence and Venice in Italy and Istanbul in Turkey.

In and around these three cities the author spins a tale that manages to draw in some of the most known sights of these three cities

At the same time the main story in itself is not the usual whodunnit that we find in thrillers.

The protagonist once again is the eminent Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon who we have already met in the Da Vinci Code and other Dan Brown thrillers.

At the beginning of the book Robert wakes up in a hospital room in his beloved Florence when the last thing he remembers is a quiet Saturday evening in Harvard.

Then he witnesses a murder right in front of him. Afraid that someone was out to kill him, and not quite knowing why, Robert flees with the help of Dr Sienna Brooks, who is quite resourceful when things get tough.

This is where his intimate knowledge of Florence comes handy as he and Sienna flee from those out to get him. From a decrepit hotel they flee to Palazzo Pitti and the Giardino Boboli and through the Vasari Corridor to Palazzo Vecchio with its Salone dei Cinquecento and its false ceiling where another death occurs.

Dante, the author of the Divina Commedia and one of Florence's most loved children, gets roped in providing not just his verses but also his death mask in an attempt to solve the mystery.

Some clues left behind seem to point towards Venice and St Mark's Basilica and its golden interior.

Here again Robert and Sienna draw a blank and get separated from each other. From here it's a race against each other to, as they see it, save the whole world from disaster.

This is not the usual thriller, however. At the centre is humanity itself absent-mindedly multiplying itself till there's no more space on earth. While discussing birth control and the pill and morality, the earth hurtles to its end.

But an "enlightened" and secretive scientist steps in to try and hurry up the process and save mankind from the consequences of its inaction.

He thus draws upon him the implacable enmity of The World Health Organisation. Robert Langdon and Sienna Brooks find they've been fighting on the wrong side.

Two years after the publication of the book a film was made with Tom Hanks again as Robert Langdon.