Dan Brown's 'The Lost Symbol' is sure to stimulate interest in ...
by Susan Larson, Book editor, The Times-Picayune
When Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon introduces his students to the wonders of their own country, he pretends surprise that more of his students have been to Europe than to their own capital. "Why do you think that is?" he asks.
"No drinking age in Europe!" is the quick reply.
Readers of "The Lost Symbol," Dan Brown's third novel featuring the academic action hero Langdon, will probably beat feet to Washington, D.C., as Langdon makes the persuasive case that our own history, art and architecture, that our American symbology, rivals anything to be found in Paris or Rome. Tour buses, start your engines!
When Langdon is asked to do a favor for an old friend, historian and philanthropist Peter Solomon, he is happy to oblige. Solomon is now secretary of the Smithsonian, but when Langdon shows up to give a lecture, there's no audience. (We can be sure this would never happen to Dan Brown!) The true purpose of Langdon's visit becomes clear when a severed hand, bearing Solomon's ring marking his rank as a 33rd degree Mason, as well as the iconography of the Hand of the Mysteries, proffers both an invitation and a clear message: Solomon has been kidnapped.
Solomon's kidnapper, Mal'akh, is a freakishly devout conspiracy theorist in search of a final mystery, the lost symbol, that will complete the tattooed canvas that is his body. That knowledge is what he demands as ransom for Peter Solomon. Langdon is aided in his quest for this arcane knowledge by Solomon's sister, Katherine, who has her own lab in a Smithsonian facility in Maryland, the Institute of Noetic Science, testing the boundaries between faith and science, pushing the envelope of human potential.
The capital gang also includes various members of the CIA, including the wickedly determined Inoue Sato (in a clear casting call for Linda Hunt), the architect of the Capitol (not whom you might think), the dean of the National Cathedral, and a number of law enforcement officers and genius computer hackers. But Mal'akh is elusive and smart and has had years to plan his quest.
...
Read more...