My Weekly Book

When a certain individual accuses me of inveterate cultural snobbery I point out to him that I am an avid reader of fat thrillers. Now, a thriller does not come all that much fatter than The da Vinci code and it was rendered irresistible to me, as an earlier post will show, by pushing all the right buttons. Conspiracies, Renaissance art, esoterica, revisionist feminist spirituality, if such a thing exists - I felt this man had thought: “Now what will Astrofiammante want to read” before sitting down to write it.

Now, here I am, racing through his back catalogue, at the rate of a novel every 48 hours or so. These two books, however, are very different. Angels and Demons is The da Vinci Code's direct forebear, and features its hero Dr Robert Langdon. It's far more of a traditional thriller, with the threat of a major institution being blown sky-high counting down in real time as the book progresses. It combines this with an arcane quest for knowledge in much the same vein as its successor. As I expected of Brown even by his second book, there are some huge twists and turns - the plot seems to go through 90 degrees every 100 pages or so, and my pick for the top villain was in fact redeemed so the real top villain could step forward. It's a rollercoaster, very cleverly written, with lots of shameless cliffhangers and a bit to keep the brain busy as well - just what the doctor ordered, thanks very much, where's the next one?

Quite different, as it turned out. Deception Point would be recognised as a thriller by the most conservative reader of Clive Cussler and Tom Clancy. It involves the now-familiar Brown nascent couple, this time a government data analyst and a popular TV scientist, caught up in a political intrigue that affects the US government and civil service at the highest levels. This, too, pressed all my favourite buttons - set for much of the story in the high Arctic, and when the protagonists come south it is the ocean and its wonders in the spotlight. I will say that I found the plot of this one just a tiny bit far-fetched. The hero and heroine escape by the skin of their teeth from so many life-threatening situations, and have so much luck in their quest not to be assassinated, drowned or frozen to death that you start to suspect they must have their own personal team of Olympian deities intervening to keep them in the game.

But who am I to criticise? I read it over the course of about 30 hours then ordered Digital Fortress immediately from Amazon. What else is there to say?

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 15th, 2004 at 11:13 pm and is filed under 2004 - Books read. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.