Fun TV Fiction

Deception Point by Dan Brown

Dan Brown, for many, has been the thriller writer for the past few years. The Da Vinci Code and its prequel Angels and Demons both did incredibly well and helped him eclipse even Stephen King and John Grisham for a time.

This outing is similar to his other three books – a big conspiracy, a race to solve some problem with world-wide ramifications, and some sort of code-breaking/problem-solving component. Here, the plot revolves around NASA’s discovery of life on other planets. A meteor found embedded in the Arctic is discovered by scientists with fossils of giant bugs that look to confirm life outside of Earth. Swirling around this discovery is an intense political confrontation between a president who has been hammered on excessive spending, especially on NASA, and an up-and-coming senator willing to do whatever it takes to be elected.

I finished the book in two days, which gives you some sense of the sharp pacing of Brown’s book. In many ways, I wished “literary” writers took a page from the Dan Brown’s and John Grisham’s of the world – literary fiction and beautiful writing/prose does not mean that the pace has to plod on and on and a plot has to be limited to the mundane, the every day.

Overall, this book was entertaining up until the last 50 pages where Brown had to find a way to neatly wrap up his many plotlines. The tension is well-done and this is certainly the kind of book you can read between books that actually require you to think and engage with the text, which is what I did. Don’t expect to be blown away, but enjoy being able to turn your brain off for a few hundred pages.