The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

I took this one with me on our ski trip, knowing that, even at 500 pages, it would go quick as Dan Brown’s chapters rarely run over 2 pages so with all of the blank half pages, it's really like 350 pages. Having read Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code I was prepared for another adventure for professor Robert Langdon where he would inadvertently discover some sort of secret religious symbol while being chased, with a beautiful but brilliant female sidekick, by a madman. It all happened here, this time in Washington D.C.

Lots to learn here about the secret society of Masons and their influence in the building of D.C. and of course there is a deadline for Langdon. He MUST find the lost symbol by 10 pm or the madman will release a very embarrassing video involving senators, the speaker of the house, supreme court justices, agency directors and, is that the vice president? If he doesn’t get there in time the video will be released to the media and all of these poor unfortunate folks will be out of jobs..but.. as my Annie would say "And that's a problem because...?"

I had forgotten about Brown’s liberal (and annoying) use of italics on every page. Like this one: “Langdon came to an abrupt halt in the tunnel. ‘Hold on. You’re saying this pyramid is a map…?’” or: “Not quite. The Young man paused. ‘He told me to ask you a question.’ …A very strange question…. ‘He said he needed your response right away. Love this from NYT’s Maureen Dowd: The author has gotten rich and famous without attaining a speck of subtlety. A character never just stumbles into blackness. It must be inky blackness. A character never just listens in shock. He listens in utter shock.

Not trashing the book here, it kept me hooked, but the story dragged on beyond the unexpected twist… more than we needed to know about Masons and their influence on Washington. Brown seems to have trouble deciding when to stop writing, not a problem for me.