This article is an experiment: most of the other submissions here refer exculsively, or mostly to the Brown top-seller Da Vinci Code. He did produce other books, and in all honesty what applies to one of them, applies to all. I do think, however, that using one of his less known products alows for a more, let's say, dispassionate look at his writing.
Despite hints from some people to the contrary, I am not a terrible book snob. I read crime, fantasy, s-f, thrillers and chick-lit quite frequently and historical romances from time to time.
But even a `genre` book needs to have a modicum of quality. Sadly, Dan Brown productions don't. Let's take `Digital Fortress`, his debut. As the 'Da Vinci Code', it is a thriller and as with the 'Da Vinci Code', the plot and the knowledge and context surrounding the plot are just about the only saving grace of the novel. In `Digital Fortress` it is cryptology and cyber-terrorism, in 'Da Vinci Code' it's the preposterous alternative-Christianity tale, but the plot always involves some kind of conspiracy that threatens the status quo.
A code is created: an unbreakable algorithm that would enable everybody (including of course all the world's baddies bent on destruction of any of the pillars of the USA's civilisation) to effectively encrypt and thus once and for all hide their electronic communications from the prying eyes of the authorities. The code is named 'Digital Fortress' and its creator threatens to unleash it unless the National Security Agency admits that it is in possession of a powerful parallel computer that enables it (without anybody but NSA knowing) to decode all other, currently used encryption algorithms.
Enter Commander Strathmore, a deputy director of operations of NSA, patriotic, committed, efficient, no-nonsense, passionate about homeland security and with no scruples in the name of the common good, able to throw aside all the moral doubt in the service of protecting innocent American women, children and Wall Street ownership records. Working with Strathmore is Susan Fletcher, very clever and very attractive 38 year old head of Cryptography department of the NSA. The cast of major characters include also David Becker, Susan`s boyfriend and a polyglot professor of linguistics at the Georgetown University.
Unfortunately, persuasion, bribery or violence towards the code`s creator are out of question as he`s dead, struck by a heart attack in the prologue of the novel. David Becker is then sent by Strathmore on a mission to Seville to find the key to the code while he and Susan try to unravel the mystery at the US end. Will `Digital Fortress` get into the hands of the baddies? Will it prove to be undoing of National Security Agency? Will Susan, David and Commander Strathmore live to the end of the story and will any of them or other characters prove to be something else that they seem to be?
As you can see, the plot is pretty exciting. Let us look at how Brown executes it, as the execution is what makes (or breaks) a writer.
Brown uses very short chapters - some of them are half-page long and while for the most of the book it is rather annoying, it works well during the final climactic moments. There are several attempts at twists and turns and while the ones concerning the nature of the code work quite well, the ones concerning the character`s switches from `baddies` to `goodies` and vice versa are rather predictable.
The final de-coding (c`mon, you know there has to be a final de-coding!) is an exercise in idiocy: the suspense stems mostly from seeing the utter inability of supposedly crme de la crme of NSA cryptographers to work out a clue even I managed to work out as soon as it was revealed. A thriller about codes that doesn`t leave you gasping with admiration `I would have never worked THAT one out` is a bit of a downer, really. But without getting too picky, the plot is all right and would get solid three, maybe even four stars from me.
Where `Digital Fortress` fails is the way it`s written. Brown is - just - capable of telling the story, relating the events and moving the action forwards in a sequence of more or less neat cliff-hangers, a technique he will repeat in his subsequent novel and I suspect something that heleped propel him to the stratosphere of pot-boiler bestseller lists.
But his description is embarrassing, his dialogue even more and his sentences often crummy and cumbersome.
That is how David Becker, Susan`s husband is described:
"His strong jaw and taut features reminded Susan of carved marble. Over six feet tall, Becker moved across a squash court faster than any of his colleagues could comprehend. After soundly beating his opponents, he would cool off by dousing his head in a drinking fountain and soaking his tuft of thick black hair. Then, still dripping he`d treat his opponents to a fruit shake and a bagel." Eh?
And look at this scene-setting: "a modern desk ... looked like some sort of alien cockpit propped there in the centre of his curtained chamber."
Of minaor niggles, Dan Brown`s fondness for the word `midsection` as applied to human waist/lower back has been particularly baffling me since I read `Digital Fortress`.
The novel is also full of little niggling incredulities which frequently produced a surprised `what?` from this reader.
David Becker, a university professor in Georgetown is unaware of the existence of NSA until asked to do some translation work for them - that happens 2.5 years before then novel takes place, almost certainly in the 90`s, probably mid or late rather than early 90`s. Excuse me, but I recall reading a big feature about NSA in a general interest weekly issued in communist Poland in the 80`s. Possibility of a educated American working at a university near the centres of power not being aware of NSA seems very low.
The same David Becker who is, as we recall, a *professor* at an American university, is paid so low that he needs freelance translation assignments in order to `re-string his old Dunlop with gut`. Ouch.
Dan Brown`s description of Spanish Health Service makes it look worse than what you could encounter in Poland during the shortages in the 80`s - seems highly unlikely to me, but if anybody knows any better, please let me know and I will amend.
The dialogue is in a dreadful class of its own: people simply don`t speak like that. Even people in books. Even, even people in cheap thrillers don`t speak like that.
The problem with writing about characters with an IQ of 170 employed in highly responsible, management positions is that all credibility is lost if the writer makes them behave and speak like temp office juniors. I have no idea how old Dan Brown was when `Digital Fortress` was written, but it does read like a work of a 20-something office junior.
We have to seriously doubt the alleged 170 IQ of Susan Fletcher when, after having a rather long conversation about the right of security services to snoop on the population she - repeatedly - fails to grasp the relevance of a quote that asks "Who will watch the watchers?".
Add to it a notion of a `pornographic` magazine that contains pictures of women sunbathing wearing only panties, references to `seedy bulletin boards and European chat rooms` and the fact that the only kind of laugh performed by Dan Brown`s characters is a chuckle and you get a reader simply unable to suspend the disbelief and critical faculties - cringing, rather than chuckling throughout.
All of the above applies to 'Da Vinci Code' and its followers as much as to the 'Digital Fortress'.
The simple verdict is that Dan Brown writes badly. Not only by literary fiction standards, but also by standards of airport novels, popular thrillers and associated pulp. His astonishing success is mostly due to the subject of his greatest bestseller generating incredible hype round his work.
The interesting question would be to try to ask why Code was so immensly popular. But this is one for a different article.