Inferno
Monday, July 29th, 2013
The Short Take:
This time Brown’s Professor Langdon is following clues related to Dante’s Inferno to tack down a hidden virus that could doom millions of people. If you like Brown, or Dante for that matter, you’ll probably enjoy his newest thriller.
Why?
Brown is not my favorite thriller writer. His lengthy descriptions just get me bogged down. I will say, however, that he can certainly sell a city. Large portions of this novel take place in Florence and Venice, and the way he wrote about them just moved those places to the top of my “must see” list. However, while encouraging tourism is nice, it’s not necessarily ideal in a thriller.
Beyond that, this outing overdid the red herrings and plot twists. After each new reveal, instead of going”gosh, that was cool” it was more like “wait a minute, that doesn’t quite jive with what (insert character name) has been doing.”
That said, Brown kept me anxious about the final outcome, and that’s the main point of a thriller.
A Little Plot:
Langdon wakes up with a head wound and no memory of the last two days or how he came to Italy. Before he can get his bearings, people start shooting at him and a young female doctor steers him to safety — for a short time at least.
His only clue is a strange object sewn into his jacket’s lining.
By the way, this is the second book I’ve read this year that focused on the major problems of over-population (the other was an older book of Christopher Buckley’s, Boomsday). The books couldn’t be any more different, but the message behind them both gives me pause,