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Gunpowder plot on slow fuse

By Chitra Rao

There is a basic problem all remarkable creators face: holding on to the benchmark that makes them remarkable.

Dan Brown is at a similar stage. His third book in the series starring Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, The Lost Symbol, has been awaited by readers with piqued curiosities. So much so that the book broke opening-day sales records. After the massive success of the earlier two books, which courted great controversy, Brown’s dedicated fan following has been waiting to see what intoxicating, exhilarating whirlwind of fast-paced action-packed adventure the author will serve up.

With expectations running so high, Brown seems almost hard-pressed to deliver another unputdownable page-turner. You can’t really blame the author if his latest book is always measured against the weight of controversy of his two preceding works. With the Vatican and the Holy Grail as the backdrops of the earlier books, the reader is automatically braced to encounter another radical concept. That which is the hallmark here fails the mark.

In The Lost Symbol, Robert Langdon is caught in an elaborate trap set by a fanatical yet meticulous maniac who seems driven by the desire to discover the deepest secret of the Freemasons. The action takes place in Washington DC, beginning with the US Capitol Building and its many secrets and unknown facts, before moving on.

With his mentor and friend Peter Solomon abducted and held captive, Langdon races against time to solve ancient messages hidden in ciphers and numbers to decrypt that which the Masons guard with their lives. To add to the chaos, the CIA — with a diminutive but formidable chain-smoking woman with a scar-lined neck leading the charge — also seems bent on getting to the secret as there is a perceived national security threat. Left with no choice, and clueless about what he is supposed to do, Langdon does what he is best at: deciphering symbols. But preceding the code-breaking and symbol deduction are long intervals of slow, barely-moving pages where you almost will the characters to think faster and come to conclusions quicker than a bunch of wide-eyed first-timers who have to pause and gape at anything new before they can move on.

In fact, this is where Brown fails his readers. He treats every piece of information as a big revelation that the readers should be in awe of and in the effort to explain each revelation brings a didactic tone to the narrative which reduces the momentum. The result is that the readers are at great risk of losing the thread because the author has important lessons to impart.

More than that, there are descriptions of episodes and characters which seem completely out of context and not in tune with the fabric of the book. Brown seems eager to go into great detail explaining things which have no great bearing in the larger scheme.

The villain of the piece seems a letdown as the readers are kept in long-delayed suspense as to the motive of his actions and are left wondering what he aspires to. The tempo is lethargic. It’s only towards the long-awaited and long-drawn climax that the adrenaline rushes and jolts the reader out of the slumber of the preceding pages.

The book has its high points as well. Brown weaves a well-though-out plot around an old and famous secret society: the Freemasons. Taking instances and practices from the present day and connecting them to something ancient and long forgotten with logical and sound reasoning has been a consistent feature which is continued in this book as well. He also peppers the narrative with interesting bits of information hitherto unknown. Brown even gives his hero physical appeal (6-foot-tall, athletic build, swims 40 laps every day).

Accompanying Langdon on his quest this time is an older, attractive heroine who is smarter than most people around her. She is Katherine Solomon, the younger sister of Langdon’s friend Peter who’s making breakthrough findings with her experiments in the field of Noetic science.

But what you may believe to be a letdown midway may turn out to be a shocking secret. Read on.