Book Review: Digital Fortress by Dan Brown

This is not exactly a new book, but since I just finished it yesterday, I figured it was well worth reviewing, right?

Also, this was the last Dan Brown book that I had not yet read. Fittingly, it was definitely done in the same style that any fan of Dan Brown will know very well.

Two of the main characters are a couple, named Susan and David. David is a professor of strong repute at a prestigious university, while Susan is a very competent and capable member of the NSA team, a top-notch government program of high tech computer analysis, specifically breaking codes. To help them along, they have at their disposal the secret TRANSLTR supercomputer, which has yet to be stumped by any code.

But for the first time, it has run into a problem, and everything suddenly seems to be going wrong. Susan’s boss, Commander Strathmore, has learned that one of the NSA’s former employees, and now a rival, has come up with an algorithm that the rotates, and so the pass code is constantly changing. It is, in other words, an unbreakable code, and for the first time in it’s history, the TRANSLTR supercomputer is stumped. Moreover, it seems to be running into all sorts of problems, and it does not take long for this to attract attention.

Unbeknownst to Susan, Commander Strathmore calls up David, Susan’s boyfriend, and requests his help. He sends him to Seville , Spain , to retrieve a key link that should provide the pass code. It seems like it should be an open and shut kind of thing, but then it would not be a Dan Brown novel, right? David, who is a professor much more used to classrooms and libraries than he is to code breaking and engaging in high risk spy games, soon finds himself in over his head, and the pace of the book just keeps going up and up, of course. He soon finds himself having to survive the best attempts of a professional assassin hell bent on eliminating him.

In the meantime, back in Washington, TRANSLTR’s futile attempts to break the unbreakable code has finally attracted attention, including some code breaker computer geeks, and that of none other than the Director of Operations for NSA, who cuts his trip to South America short, in order to see what is going on with TRANSLTR at the NSA headquarters.

What is uncovered, perhaps predictably, is a tale of lies and deceit that keeps the story going until, ultimately, it reaches it’s climax. TRANSLTR is clearly having problems, and the attempts of concerned parties to intervene and save the computer before it possibly can destroy itself proves, ultimately, fatal to a few people. In typical Dan Brown fashion, when we find out the betrayals and counter betrayals, the secrecy and high stakes chess match strategies underneath everything, it proves all to be for surprisingly human reasons and human errors made.

Dan Brown has often been criticized for his works. Many people feel he is arrogant, and indeed, a case can be made to make him seem so. This was a man who famously claimed that everything in his breakout book, the DaVinci Code, was absolutely true (not everything in the book is). But I remember seeing a clip of an interview that he did, where he was questioned about it, and he just said that his books are meant to be fun, and that readers should just come along for the ride, and have fun.

So far, all of the books that he has written have been fun indeed, and I will also admit that they have been educational for me, as well. It was enjoyable to learn about the Sacred Feminine concept as the actual legend of the Holy Grail on the Da Vinci Code, learning about the persecution and goals of the Illuminati throughout history, as well as the modern science of anti-matter in Angels & Demons, as well as to learn more about the Masons in The Lost Symbol. Deception Point was a page turned and strong thriller, also.

Indeed, his works have been highly scrutinized and exposed for their historical inaccuracies by the world of specialized academia, and they are not wrong to point these things out. Still, Dan Brown has managed to package much information that is revealing to John Q. Public, and does so in a format that is exciting and conducive to wide appeal. For that, I applaud his effort and success at writing, having thoroughly enjoyed his books to this point (is that wrong to say?). As he suggested in that interview some years ago, these are not scholarly works meant to be entirely accurate in every conceivable way, but rather to enlighten the reader on subject matters usually relegated to those privileged few who dwell upon such matters up high in their ivory towers overlooking the lush gardens of academia. The main ideas and histories come across well enough, and strongly enhance and even accelerate the story-telling. You never know about the intellectual elites, but I, for one, am along for the ride!