February 28, 2004

The Da Vinci Code and Dan Brown's other novels

Dan Brown novels Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is a novel about a secret society that harbors dangerous evidence that could shatter the Catholic Church if revealed. It's probably the best conspiracy story I've read. I never did make it through Focault's Pendulum or any of Pynchon's books. They bored the pants off me. And The Illuminatus Trilogy seemed a lot more profound (and coherent) when I was in college than it did during a recent re-reading. Brown got the right mix of suspense, history, and conspiracy with The Da Vinci Code.

After reading The Da Vinci Code, I bought all of Brown's other novels: Angels & Demons, Deception Point, and Digital Fortress. I enjoyed them all, but none are as good as The Da Vinci Code. Angels & Demons come very close. The story's set-up is similar to The Da Vinci Code's. In fact, they share the same protagonist, an American professor of religious studies. Both stories involve the professor getting involved in a whirlwind adventure in a large European city (Paris in Da Vinci, and Rome in Angles & Demons) and both feature daughters of important secret society leaders who are murdered by a gruesome misfit henchmen of a competing secret society. The similarities didn't bother me though, because Angels & Demons is such a fun ride.

Brown's other two novels, Deception Point, and Digital Fortress, were written before Da Vinci and Angels & Demons, and while they're both perfectly readable adventures, they lack the historical and conspiracy angles that fuel his later work. Digital Fortress, the weakest of all, takes place in the bowels of the National Security Agency. The female hero of the story must crack a supposedly uncrackable code, and she doesn't know which of her coworkers she can trust. Almost every scene takes place in the basement of the NSA, and I felt claustrophobic while reading it. Brown wisely began moving his chartacters all around the world in Deception Point, which a fun science and political thriller about the discovery of an unusual meteorite in the arctic circle. Here's how I'd grade these books on a scale of 1 to 10:

The Da Vinci Code - 10

Angels & Demons - 9

Deception Point - 6

Digital Fortress - 5