The Lost Symbol

There was a race on to be the first to review Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol a week or two ago, but now that the dust is settling, it is clear that yet again, Dan Brown has written one pacey, compelling thriller. Once again, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to the scene of a gruesome attack, joins forces with an attractive and erudite love interest, and speeds around a world capital chasing clues, solving puzzles, and risking his life while dropping cocktail parties? worth of scholarly minutiae. This time, he is lured to Washington DC to save his mentor, Peter Solomon, a prominent member of the Freemasons who has been kidnapped by a cryptic, heavily tattooed, Homer-reading psycho calling himself Mal?akh. Luckily, Langdon remains a terrific hero, a bookish intellectual who is cool in a crisis and quick on his feet, The codes are intriguing and Brown mostly manages to keep the pages turning but as with all thrillers, it is the chase that matters and this certainly is a chase to remember.