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THE LOST SYMBOL
by Dan Brown
Doubleday, September 2009
528 pages
$29.95
ISBN: 0385504225


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

THE LOST SYMBOL is an interesting story that will keep readers absorbed with suspense, but it's not as good as THE DA VINCI CODE, which I reviewed here in March 2003. Dan Brown's latest novel uses short chapters (133 chapters in 509 pages) and usually each new chapter does not continue from the previous one, but alternates between two or three scenes of simultaneous action. It presents a lot of arcane items (esoterica and exoterica, trivia to some but fascinating to me) on such subjects as Washington, DC, the Freemasons, ancient religions and other lore, and new recent interest in the joining of science and religion. Unless you're a Freemason yourself, you'll learn more about them than you may want to retain.

I've lived in and out of the Washington, DC area since I was 16 and thought I knew the city well, but Brown's research has uncovered things that I had either forgotten or never knew in the first place. And although I've walked many times past the Masonic Temple on 16th St. and the Almas Shriners building on K St., I had never taken a tour of them, nor did I ever realize that there has been so much Freemason influence and symbolism connected to the founding and development of Washington, such as in the US Capitol and the Washington Monument. Fourteen US Presidents have been Freemasons, including George Washington and Harry Truman.

The story involves Harvard symbolist professor Robert Langdon (the DA VINCI CODE protagonist) being asked to keep some talismans for an old friend, Peter Solomon, head of the Smithsonian Institute. Another main character is Solomon's unmarried sister Katherine, as close to a female romantic interest as the story gets, and I like the fact that she is 50 years of age (I hope when Hollywood films the book, they don't use an 18-year-old girl for this part), attractive, and an investigator into the hidden powers of thought, that is, noetics. She is said to use her experiments to answer such questions as "Does anyone hear our prayers?" "Is there life after death?", and "Do humans have souls?" and although Brown implies that she has solved these eternal questions affirmatively, he does not go into any detail.

Other important characters are two of Peter's fellow 33rd-degree Freemasons, Warren Bellamy, chief administrator of the U.S. Capitol, and a priest named Galloway who is Dean of the Washington Cathedral. Also prominent are a more recent 33rd-degree Freemason who calls himself Mal'akh, and a woman, Inoue Sato, who is called the "Director" of the CIA Security Office, although in my years as an old CIA hand I had never known anyone in the Agency called a Director except the CIA Director himself - other high officials were the deputy director and a number of assistant directors.

The material Langdon is holding for Solomon is said to be the key to unlock ancient knowledge that could lead to becoming the most powerful man in the world, and Mal'akh wants it. Mal'akh's ability to get some of the most intelligent people in Washington, in addition to Harvard's Langdon, to accept his telephone fabrications at face value and thereby fall into his traps is one of the most incredible parts of this story.

The arcane aspects are especially interesting, but they raise the question as to which statements are true and which are pure invention. Which I checked, some parts that I thought might be fictional turned out to be factual; for example, Brown refers to an Institute of Noetic Sciences, and there is such a place with one of its founders being a former astronaut, but Brown does not mention that of the many universities participating in Noetic Sciences, all but two had dropped it because they felt it was too speculative and not sufficiently justified. Brown also mentions a book by Lynne McTaggart, THE INTENTION EXPERIMENT, and her description of human consciousness as a "substance outside the confines of the body," and the fact is that this book is real and was published in several recent editions.

But it seems almost as if Brown did his research mainly on matters he was unsure about and just took for granted without further research those matters that may have been somewhat familiar to him, leading to factual mistakes. Examples include the claim that the founders of the city of Washington erected the Washington Monument. Actually the Monument was not even designed until the middle years of the 19th century, well after those responsible for the city's plan had passed away. And the role of the CIA Security head Sato strikes me as pure bunkum and completely unrealistic. She acts as if her position gives her complete authority over anything that happens in Washington. At least when I was in CIA it had no power to arrest people such as a Harvard professor, a chief of the staff at the US Capitol, or the head of the Smithsonian because they would not do everything the security chief asked. There are certain careless errors as well. For example, in what is probably a typo, Brown has Mal'akh say "your mother" when he has to mean "your wife."

For all that, the esoterica and exoterica in the story are interesting, but I'd advise checking meanings very carefully before making a contribution to Wikipedia. Brown tries to make his story realistic, but somehow the scope of what he is writing makes it difficult, even with an assist from Einstein with quotes like "That which is impenetrable to us really exists. Behind the secrets of nature remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable," and "The religion of the future ... will transcend personal God and avoid dogma and superstition."

Unfortunately the end of the story is sort of a let-down. He also paints himself in a corner when he uses so much of the arcane from various sources and then turns his back on these sources in the end (I can't say more without giving too much away). On the whole, nothing I can say will make any difference to Dan Brown's sales, but readers who enjoyed THE DA VINCI CODE may find themselves disappointed with this one.

Reviewed by Eugene Aubrey Stratton, September 2009

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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