Fiction review: The Lost Symbol

FICTION
Reviewing Dan Brown's new thriller several days after its publication is a little like standing in the middle of the Indy 500 racetrack and announcing that the race has started. But here goes: Dan Brown has written a sequel to his bestselling thriller, "The Da Vinci Code." It's called "The Lost Symbol," and you really should consider buying one of the 5 million copies its publisher printed for its first run.

Whatever critics say about his literary talents, Brown is a master of the breathless, puzzle-driven thriller, and "The Lost Symbol" merits the hype.

Granted, some features will feel familiar to Brown's fans. Like "The Da Vinci Code," for example, the new book opens with a gruesome discovery in a public place. (It's the Capitol Rotunda in Washington this time, as opposed to Paris's Louvre.) And a key element of the plot hinges on interpreting a Renaissance artwork whose symbolism "is so complex it makes Leonardo da Vinci look overt." (Brace yourselves, everyone!)

But the book moves so quickly that there's no time to complain about the similarities. Brown sweeps you up and carries you nonstop for 500 pages, although it takes awhile to reach the top speeds achieved in "The Da Vinci Code."

As "The Lost Symbol" opens, Robert Langdon, a Harvard symbologist making his third appearance in a Dan Brown novel, is rushing along Washington's rain-slick streets to give a speech in the U.S. Capitol building's National Statuary Hall. His subject: the building's Masonic history. But when he steps into the hall, he finds it empty. The invitation to speak -- extended by a man who claimed to be the executive assistant to Langdon's longtime mentor, Peter Solomon -- is a ruse. But why?

We don't have to wait long to find out. Solomon's supposed assistant is in fact his kidnapper, he tells Langdon via cell phone, and he has lured the symbologist to the nation's capital to coerce him into finding "an ancient portal" somewhere in Washington. Solomon, a high-ranking Mason, has confessed to his kidnapper that Langdon is the one man who can unlock it. If he fails, the kidnapper warns Langdon, his mentor will die.

Ciphers and Masonic secrets? You're sold, right?

Be forewarned. Langdon quickly found himself the subject of an international manhunt in "The Da Vinci Code," but it takes him 168 pages to go on the lam this time out. Until then, he explores the Capitol building (including its labyrinthine basement) in the company of the Capitol police chief and the director of the CIA's Office of Security. The worst threats he faces are cramped hallways and low ceilings, which trigger his claustrophobia.

But consider: While "The Lost Symbol" builds momentum, Brown offers a dizzying array of arcana, which will undoubtedly assuage readers' worries about spending uninterrupted hours reading what they might otherwise consider a guilty pleasure.

• Did you know that "workers in 1930 discovered Gen. John Alexander Logan's long-deceased stuffed horse" in a sealed basement chamber of the Capitol building?

• Are you familiar with superstring theory? "Based on the most recent scientific observations, it suggested the multidimensional universe was made up not of three . . . but rather of ten dimensions, which all interacted like vibrating strings, similar to resonating violin strings," Brown informs us.

• And did you know that "talisman" didn't always have a magical connotation? "[I]t had another meaning -- 'completion,'" Brown writes. "From the Greek telesma, meaning 'complete,' a talisman was any object or idea that completed another and made it whole. The finishing element."

Informative, eh? But that's nothing compared to the Ancient Mysteries ("the lost wisdom of all the ages"), to which that ancient portal will lead, if only Langdon can solve all the puzzles Brown throws at him.

Of course, "The Lost Symbol" isn't merely a struggle for the world's best-kept secrets. It's also its publisher's attempt to save the book industry. It's in such a dismal state right now that resurrecting it makes finding the Holy Grail look like a cakewalk. But if anyone can do it, Langdon can.

Sales of "The Lost Symbol" in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom topped a million in the first 24 hours alone, setting a record for adult fiction. And the book's American publisher announced that it would print an additional 600,000 copies to meet demand.

Ladies and gentlemen, the race has begun.

Doug Childers is a Richmond writer and edits WAG, a literary Web site at http://www.thewag.net.