Angels & Demons - Dan Brown

Millions of readers have been drawn to the stories by the author of The Da Vinci Code and whether you like his plots and characterizations or his views on religion and politics or not, from a standpoint of “Thriller craftsmanship” and attention to detail, Brown is a masterful writer.

If you have read the Da Vinci Code you would find that this novel is almost machine-tooled on the same framework! The analogies are so perfect that you can actually have a DAN BROWN formula worked out after reading through his works (four till now, The Solomon Key yet to come).

Formula for writing a Dan Brown novel:

1. Begin with a murder of a involved character. His death puts an irrevocable full stop on some huge covert operation that has continued for a couple of millennia and is the start of all rapid fire events to follow.

2. Involve some kind of a giant institution - preferably an agency with a bizarre agenda - say, the Roman Catholic Church, which of course, has the bizarre agenda of propagating Christianity (Huh?)

3. Entangle and entwine the hero and the leading lady who is related to the murdered man (literally I mean!) - send them on a wild goose (grail?) chase

4. Initiate a major crisis for mankind, which sends the hero and heroine on the big chase

5. Involve a darklord operating from behind the scenes whose identity will only be revealed in the last few pages.

6. End the story with such gusto and drama that rocks not just the darklord and the major characters but also the giant institution to its roots.

Angels and Demons is a prequel to The Da Vinci Code, and its setting is in and around The Vatican i.e. Rome. Robert Langdon is featured as hero as in Da Vinci code and is similarly awakened one night by cryptic caller who introduces himself as Maximilian Kohler, the director of CERN, and follows up his phone call by sending a fax on which is a photo of a dead man branded with the words ’’Illuminati” carved into his chest.

The Illuminati, which is an ancient secret cult thought to be by now extinct, and was formed by a group of scientists who secretly grouped together to share ideas when they were outlawed by the Church in the days of the famous scientist Galileo Galilei are shown as heretics and enemies of The Church.

According to legend, The Illuminati had never been completely wiped out and for centuries had remained underground, infiltrating the Masonic Temple, banking sectors, and positions of power.

The murder victim’s daughter Vittoria Vetra, a scientist and a hatha-yoga expert (her skills come in handy during assaults and very handy at the end of the book where Dan paints a Hollywood type of ending in each book) returns to CERN and tells a secret that if you find unbearable while reading can be studied at:

https://livefromcern.web.cern.ch/livefromcern/antimatter/

Laws of physics argue that something cannot be created from nothing - to prove that the big bang theory of creation she and her father created Anti-matter and stored it in a canister suspended in an electromagnetic field so that it couldn’t come into contact with anything - cos matter and anti-matter contact results in annihilation of everything around for miles in a huge explosion.

The plot thickens - A phone call comes from the Vatican where the canister has been discovered on a security camera’s screen, but the camera too is missing, so its location is not known. The batteries inside the canister last for 24 hours and hence this becomes a time-bomb. As if that weren’t enough, the cardinals at the Vatican are in the middle of Church event - electing a new Pope as the previous pope is just dead. Thus the Illuminati have planned to wipe out the the wealth and seat of power of the Catholic Church in an instant as well as kill four of the most important cardinals in broad daylight in randomly selected churches as an act of defiance - if all this plot leaves you spellbound, I find a good reason to put on the brakes here... the suspense can only be relieved by reading the book!

The book is FAST - you breathlessly turn pages after pages minute-by-minute but at the same time Dan Brown doesn’t forget to entertain you with his pain-stakingly researched facts and relevant trivia on history, architecture, religion and its clash with science - great but again very error laden when it comes to facts.

Here is a peek into some falsehoods again:

The church murdered Copernicus and other scientists ’’for revealing scientific truths.’’

This is grossly incorrect - Copernicus died from complications from a stroke in 1543, soon after the publication of his De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. There is no evidence that Copernicus was murdered by the church.

Vittoria Vetra practices hatha yoga, ’’The ancient Buddhist art of meditative stretching’’

All Indians and most sensible firangis know that yoga is Hindu in origin, not Buddhist.

It’s a popular misconception that Michelangelo designed the uniforms of the Swiss Guard; in fact, the current uniforms were designed by Jules Repond in the early 20th century.

Brown describes the Tiber as ’’Even from the air, Langdon could tell the water was deep.’’ It’s hard to believe the Tiber would ever qualify as deep - running from Rome to the Mediterranean Sea, its depth ranges from 7 to 20 feet.

BBC correspondent Gunther Glick tells his photographer colleague that ’’the Rhodes Scholarships were funds set up centuries ago to recruit the world’s brightest young minds into the Illuminati.’’ This is impossible, since the fellowships were initiated after the death of Cecil Rhodes in 1902.

Using Brown’s map, neither arm of his cross cuts directly through Ponte Santa Angelo. He’s just making stuff up.

The office of the devil’s advocate was abolished in 1983.