Some consider him the big daddy of conspiracy theories and some swear by his credibility, some consider his attention to detail a wee bit boring and some find it intellectually satisfying, some even earn a living analyzing his intriguing prophecies and some just plain adore(I am in this category) him.Meet Dan Brown(i.e if you haven’t heard of him yet, which is highly unlikely after all the brouhaha created by his anti Vatican masterpiece the Da Vinci Code), probably the best political/crime fiction writer of this generation.
"Deception point", The name itself gives a fair idea of what to expect in the story, doesn’t it?After somewhat shattering the glass ceilings of the Vatican in his earlier works, Angels and Demons & Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown has trained his guns on Nasa, this time.Nasa and deception!!!sounds a little out of place, until one starts going beyond the prologue and turning the pages over.
It’s election season in the US and the biggest issue raised by the challenger Sedgewick Sexton is the Government spending on NASA which yields very little tangible benefits to the general population.The wily senator has all but cornered the incumbent president Zach Herney on this issue , winning almost all the pre-election opinion polls.Sexton’s daughter Rachel, an experienced intelligence analyst working with the NRO(National Reconnaissance Office) suddenly gets a call from the White house for some urgent purpose.In a matter of hours she is far away from the comforts of her office and after having a hesitant and turbulent ride in an F-18, she finds herself in the icy climes of the Arctic region.This is the spot where NASA has discovered a meteorite which they claim, has some form of life within it.Rachel is one of the four independent observers hand picked by the president whose job is to validate this discovery before the president goes public on it and deals a huge blow to his opponent’s campaign.
One of the observers though suddenly picks up a flaw but before he could discuss it with anyone else he is killed.But the factual evidence opposing the claims of NASA doesn’t remain hidden to Rachel , Michael Tolland and Corky Marlinson(the other two remaining observers, the former being a young and famous oceanographer and the later, a geeky old astrophysicist)for long.As they are about to disclose their findings they make an even bigger and more important discovery.Their lives are in danger.Why?who wants to kill them?Well, if I tell you everything here there won’t be much fun left in reading the book.
Reading a Dan Brown book is a rewarding experience, to say the least.How he differs from the Jeffrey Archers and the Frederick Forsyths of the world is in the extensive research of his subjects."Deception point " is no different.Read it and you will know as much about a presidential campaign’s behind the scenes as you will learn about marine biology and astrophysics.His characters are perfectly etched out the way he wants them to be.The best part though is not only is he able to maintain the coherence of the plot despite dealing with such loosely linked disparate subjects, he actually makes reading science fun.He throws in a chase sequence which starts in the north pole and ends somewhere in the Atlantic ocean where the protagonists are chased by the US Delta Squad(no less), supposedly the most lethal of all military squads.The only thing predictable about this story (as I had read his other three and had some idea of what to expect from this master story teller) was that , you can never truly and correctly predict the whodunnit person until the last pages.
P.S-Many of you might have seen the videos in youtube or elsewhere claiming the moon landing by NASA asronauts to be a scam.Although on first thougt it appears only as believable as some theories suggesting that 9/11 bombings were a CIA inside job.But after reading this one I am inclined to attach some credibility to that claim as well.That’s the Dan Brown effect.