CANR

• Origin - 2017 Doubleday, New York, NY

• Fantastic Fiction -

  Series
  Robert Langdon
  1. Angels and Demons (2000)
  2. The Da Vinci Code (2003)
  3. The Lost Symbol (2007)
  4. Inferno (2010)
  5. Origin (2017)
  Robert Langdon Omnibus (omnibus) (2005)
  The Robert Langdon Collection (omnibus) (2014)

   
  Novels
  Digital Fortress (1998)
  Deception Point (2001)

   
  Non fiction
  187 Men to Avoid (1995) (as by Danielle Brown)

• Wikipedia -

  Dan Brown
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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  For other uses, see Daniel Brown (disambiguation).
  Dan Brown

  Brown in 2015
  Born
  Daniel Gerhard Brown[1]
  June 22, 1964 (age 53)
  Exeter, New Hampshire, U.S.
  Occupation
  Novelist
  Language
  Spanish and English
  Nationality
  American
  Alma mater
  Amherst College
  Genre
  Thriller, adventure, mystery, conspiracy
  Notable works
  Digital Fortress
  Deception Point
  Angels & Demons
  The Da Vinci Code
  The Lost Symbol
  Inferno
  Origin
  Spouse
  Blythe Newlon (m. 1997)

  Signature

  Website
  www.danbrown.com
  Daniel Gerhard "Dan" Brown (born June 22, 1964) is an American author of thriller fiction, most notably the novels Angels & Demons (2000), The Da Vinci Code (2003), and Inferno (2013). Brown's novels are treasure hunts set in a 24-hour period,[2] and feature the recurring themes of cryptography, keys, symbols, codes, and conspiracy theories. His books have been translated into 52 languages, and as of 2012, sold over 200 million copies. Three of them, Angels & Demons (2000), The Da Vinci Code (2003), and Inferno (2013), have been adapted into films.
  Brown's novels that feature the lead character Robert Langdon also include historical themes and Christianity as motifs, and as a result, have generated controversy. Brown states on his website that his books are not anti-Christian, though he is on a 'constant spiritual journey' himself, and says that his book The Da Vinci Code is simply "an entertaining story that promotes spiritual discussion and debate" and suggests that the book may be used "as a positive catalyst for introspection and exploration of our faith".

  Contents  [hide] 
  1
  Early life
  2
  Career
  2.1
  Songwriter and pop singer
  2.2
  Writing
  2.2.1
  Influences and habits
  2.2.2
  Copyright infringement cases
  3
  Charity work
  4
  Reception
  5
  Bibliography
  5.1
  Stand-alone novels
  5.2
  Robert Langdon series
  6
  Adaptations
  7
  References
  8
  External links

  Early life[edit]
  Dan Gerhard Brown was born on June 22, 1964 at Exeter Hospital. He has a younger sister, Valerie (born 1968) and brother, Gregory (born 1975). They were raised in Exeter, New Hampshire, where Brown attended Exeter's public schools until the ninth grade.[3] He grew up on the campus of Phillips Exeter Academy, where his father, Richard G. Brown, was a teacher of mathematics and wrote textbooks[4] from 1968 until his retirement in 1997.[5] his mother, Constance (née Gerhard), trained as a church organist and student of sacred music.[3] Brown was raised an Episcopalian,[4] and described his religious evolution in a 2009 interview:
  "I was raised Episcopalian, and I was very religious as a kid. Then, in eighth or ninth grade, I studied astronomy, cosmology, and the origins of the universe. I remember saying to a minister, 'I don't get it. I read a book that said there was an explosion known as the Big Bang, but here it says God created heaven and Earth and the animals in seven days. Which is right?' Unfortunately, the response I got was, 'Nice boys don't ask that question.' A light went off, and I said, 'The Bible doesn't make sense. Science makes much more sense to me.' And I just gravitated away from religion.[4]
  When asked in the same interview about his then-current religious views, Brown replied:
  The irony is that I've really come full circle. The more science I studied, the more I saw that physics becomes metaphysics and numbers become imaginary numbers. The farther you go into science, the mushier the ground gets. You start to say, 'Oh, there is an order and a spiritual aspect to science.'"[4]
  Brown's interest in secrets and puzzles stems from their presence in his household as a child, where codes and ciphers were the linchpin tying together the mathematics, music, and languages in which his parents worked. The young Brown spent hours working out anagrams and crossword puzzles, and he and his siblings participated in elaborate treasure hunts devised by their father on birthdays and holidays. On Christmas, for example, Brown and his siblings did not find gifts under the tree, but followed a treasure map with codes and clues throughout their house and even around town to find the gifts.[6] Brown's relationship with his father inspired that of Sophie Neveu and Jacques Saunière in The Da Vinci Code, and Chapter 23 of that novel was inspired by one of his childhood treasure hunts.[7]
  After graduating from Phillips Exeter, Brown attended Amherst College, where he was a member of Psi Upsilon fraternity. He played squash, sang in the Amherst Glee Club, and was a writing student of visiting novelist Alan Lelchuk. Brown spent the 1985 school year abroad in Seville, Spain, where he was enrolled in an art history course at the University of Seville.[6] Brown graduated from Amherst in 1986.[8][9]
  Career[edit]
  Songwriter and pop singer[edit]
  After graduating from Amherst, Brown dabbled with a musical career, creating effects with a synthesizer, and self-producing a children's cassette entitled SynthAnimals, which included a collection of tracks such as "Happy Frogs" and "Suzuki Elephants"; it sold a few hundred copies. He then formed his own record company called Dalliance, and in 1990 self-published a CD entitled Perspective, targeted to the adult market, which also sold a few hundred copies. In 1991 he moved to Hollywood to pursue a career as singer-songwriter and pianist. To support himself, he taught classes at Beverly Hills Preparatory School.[10][11]
  He also joined the National Academy of Songwriters, and participated in many of its events. It was there that he met Blythe Newlon, a woman 12 years his senior, who was the Academy's Director of Artist Development. Though it was not officially part of her job, she took on the seemingly unusual task of helping to promote Brown's projects; she wrote press releases, set up promotional events, and put him in contact with people who could be helpful to his career. She and Brown also developed a personal relationship, though this was not known to all of their associates until 1993, when Brown moved back to New Hampshire, and it was learned that Newlon would accompany him. They married in 1997, at Pea Porridge Pond, near Conway, New Hampshire.[12]
  In 1994 Brown released a CD titled Angels & Demons. Its artwork was the same ambigram by artist John Langdon which he later used for the novel Angels & Demons. The liner notes also again credited his wife for her involvement, thanking her "for being my tireless cowriter, coproducer, second engineer, significant other, and therapist". The CD included songs such as "Here in These Fields" and the religious ballad, "All I Believe".[13] Brown and his wife, Blythe, moved to his home town in New Hampshire in 1993. Brown became an English teacher at his alma mater Phillips Exeter, and gave Spanish classes to 6th, 7th, and 8th graders at Lincoln Akerman School, a small school for K–8th grade with about 250 students, in Hampton Falls.[citation needed]
  Writing[edit]
  Main article: Robert Langdon (book series)
  While on vacation in Tahiti in 1993,[6] Brown read Sidney Sheldon's novel The Doomsday Conspiracy, and was inspired to become a writer of thrillers.[6][14][15] He started work on Digital Fortress, setting much of it in Seville, where he had studied in 1985. He also co-wrote a humor book with his wife, 187 Men to Avoid: A Survival Guide for the Romantically Frustrated Woman, under the pseudonym "Danielle Brown". The book's author profile reads, "Danielle Brown currently lives in New England: teaching school, writing books, and avoiding men." The copyright is attributed to Dan Brown.
  In 1996 Brown quit teaching to become a full-time writer. Digital Fortress was published in 1998. His wife, Blythe, did much of the book's promotion, writing press releases, booking Brown on talk shows, and setting up press interviews. A few months later, Brown and his wife released The Bald Book, another humor book. It was officially credited to his wife, though a representative of the publisher said that it was primarily written by Brown. Brown subsequently wrote Angels & Demons and Deception Point, released in 2000 and 2001 respectively, the former of which was the first to feature the lead character, Harvard symbology expert Robert Langdon.
  Brown's first three novels had little success, with fewer than 10,000 copies in each of their first printings. His fourth novel, The Da Vinci Code, became a bestseller, going to the top of the New York Times Best Seller list during its first week of release in 2003. It is one of the most popular books of all time, with 81 million copies sold worldwide as of 2009.[16][17] Its success has helped push sales of Brown's earlier books. In 2004 all four of his novels were on the New York Times list in the same week,[18] and in 2005 he made Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people of the year. Forbes magazine placed Brown at No. 12 on their 2005 "Celebrity 100" list, and estimated his annual income at US$76.5 million. The Times estimated his income from Da Vinci Code sales as $250 million.
  Brown's third novel featuring Robert Langdon, The Lost Symbol, was released on September 15, 2009.[19] According to the publisher, on its first day the book sold over one million in hardcover and e-book versions in the US, the UK and Canada, prompting the printing of 600,000 hardcover copies in addition to the five million first printing.[20] The story takes place in Washington D.C. over a period of 12 hours, and features the Freemasons. Brown's promotional website states that puzzles hidden in the book jacket of The Da Vinci Code, including two references to the Kryptos sculpture at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, give hints about the sequel. This repeats a theme from some of Brown's earlier work.[citation needed]
  Brown's fourth novel featuring Robert Langdon, Inferno is a mystery thriller novel released on May 14, 2013, by Doubleday.[21] It immediately became a bestseller.[22]
  In a 2006 interview, Brown stated that he had ideas for about 12 future books featuring Robert Langdon.[23]
  Characters in Brown's books are often named after real people in his life. Robert Langdon is named after John Langdon, the artist who created the ambigrams used for the Angels & Demons CD and novel. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca is named after On a Claire Day cartoonist friend Carla Ventresca. In the Vatican archives, Langdon recalls a wedding of two people named Dick and Connie, which are the names of his parents. Robert Langdon's editor Jonas Faukman is named after Brown's real life editor Jason Kaufman. Brown also said that characters were based on a New Hampshire librarian, and a French teacher at Exeter, André Vernet. Cardinal Aldo Baggia, in Angels & Demons, is named after Aldo Baggia, instructor of modern languages at Phillips Exeter Academy.[24]
  In interviews, Brown has said his wife, Blythe, is an art historian and painter. When they met, she was the Director of Artistic Development at the National Academy for Songwriters in Los Angeles. During the 2006 lawsuit over alleged copyright infringement in The Da Vinci Code, information was introduced at trial that showed that Blythe did research for the book.[25] In one article, she was described as "chief researcher".[26]
  In late 2016, Brown has revealed that Doubleday will publish his next book, Origin on September 27, 2017. It is his seventh book published overall, and the fifth book in his Robert Langdon series.[27]
  Influences and habits[edit]
  In addition to Sidney Sheldon, Brown has been quite vocal about a number of other literary influences who have inspired his writing. He has named his six favorite literary works as Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, Codes Ciphers & Other Cryptic & Clandestine Communication by Fred Wrixon, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Wordplay: Ambigrams and Reflections on the Art of Ambigrams by John Langdon, Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and The Puzzle Palace by James Bamford. Commenting on Much Ado About Nothing, Brown says, "I didn't understand how funny this play Much Ado About Nothing truly was until I became an English teacher and had to teach it. There is no wittier dialogue anywhere." Speaking of Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Trilogy, he states, "Ludlum's early books are complex, smart, and yet still move at a lightning pace. This series got me interested in the genre of big-concept, international thrillers."[28][29] His other favorite books include Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer, Plum Island by Nelson DeMille and The Elements of Style by Strunk and White.[29] Recurring elements that Brown prefers to incorporate into his novels include a simple hero pulled out of their familiar setting and thrust into a new one with which they are unfamiliar, strong female characters, travel to interesting locations, and a 24-hour time frame in which the story takes place.[2]
  Because of the research-intensive nature of his novels, Brown can spend up to two years writing them. To remain focused on such projects, Brown ensures that when he chooses a theme for the novel (what he refers to as the "big idea"), and its subject, that they be those that can hold his interest. In Brown's view, the ideal topic does not have an easily defined right or wrong view, but presents a moral grey area that can lend itself to debate. Because his favorite subjects include codes, puzzles, treasure hunts, secretive organizations and academic lectures on obscure topics, he tends to incorporate those into his novels. Because Brown considers writing to be a discipline that requires constant practice, he has developed a routine to maintain his abilities. He wakes up at 4:00 am when there are no distractions (a practice he began with Digital Fortress when he had two daytime teaching jobs) and when he feels most productive, in order to give symbolic importance to the first order of business each day. He keeps an antique hourglass on his desk, so that he can stop briefly every hour to do push-ups, sit-ups and stretching exercises to keep his blood flowing.[30] Brown does his writing in his loft. He has also told fans that he uses inversion therapy to help with writer's block. He uses gravity boots and says, "hanging upside down seems to help me solve plot challenges by shifting my entire perspective".[31]
  Copyright infringement cases[edit]
  In August 2005 author Lewis Perdue unsuccessfully sued Brown for plagiarism, on the basis of claimed similarity between The Da Vinci Code and his novels, The Da Vinci Legacy (1983) and Daughter of God (2000). Judge George Daniels said, in part: "A reasonable average lay observer would not conclude that The Da Vinci Code is substantially similar to Daughter of God."[32]
  In April 2006 Brown's publisher, Random House, won a copyright infringement case brought by authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, who claimed that Brown stole ideas from their 1982 book Holy Blood Holy Grail for his 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code. It was in the book Holy Blood Holy Grail that Baigent, Leigh, and co-author Henry Lincoln had advanced the theory that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and had a child and that the bloodline continues to this day. Brown apparently alluded to the two authors' names in his book. Leigh Teabing, a lead character in both the novel and the film, uses Leigh's name as the first name, and anagrammatically derives his last name from Baigent's. Mr Justice Peter Smith found in Brown's favor in the case, and as a private amusement, embedded his own Smithy code in the written judgment.[33]
  On March 28, 2007, Brown's publisher, Random House, won an appeal copyright infringement case. The Court of Appeal of England and Wales rejected the efforts from Baigent and Leigh, who became liable for paying legal expenses of nearly US$6 million.[34]
  Charity work[edit]
  In October 2004, Brown and his siblings donated US$2.2 million to Phillips Exeter Academy in honor of their father, to set up the Richard G. Brown Technology Endowment to help "provide computers and high-tech equipment for students in need".[35]
  Brown and his wife Blythe are supporters of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation.[36]
  On April 14, 2011, Dan and Blythe Brown created an eponymous scholarship fund to celebrate his 25th reunion from Amherst College, a permanently endowed scholarship fund at the college whose income provides financial aid to students there, with preference for incoming students with an interest in writing.[9]
  On June 16, 2016, Dan Brown donated US$337,000 to the Ritman Library in Amsterdam to digitize a collection of ancient books.[37]
  Reception[edit]
  See also: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code
  Brown's prose style has been criticized as clumsy,[38][39] with The Da Vinci Code being described as 'committing style and word choice blunders in almost every paragraph'.[40] Much of the criticism was centered on Brown's claim found in its preface that the novel is based on fact in relation to Opus Dei and the Priory of Sion, and that "all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in [the] novel are accurate".[41][42]
  Bibliography[edit]
  Stand-alone novels[edit]
  Digital Fortress (1998)
  Deception Point (2001)
  Robert Langdon series[edit]
  Angels & Demons (2000)
  The Da Vinci Code (2003)
  The Lost Symbol (2009)
  Inferno (2013)
  Origin (2017)[43]
  Adaptations[edit]
  In 2006 Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code was released as a film by Columbia Pictures, with director Ron Howard. It was widely anticipated and launched the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, though it received overall poor reviews. It currently has a 24% rating at the film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, derived from 165 negative reviews of the 214 counted.[44] It was later listed as one of the worst films of 2006 on Ebert & Roeper,[45] but also the second highest-grossing film of the year, pulling in US$750 million worldwide.[46] Brown was listed as one of the executive producers of the film The Da Vinci Code, and also created additional codes for the film. One of his songs, "Phiano", which Brown wrote and performed, was listed as part of the film's soundtrack. In the film, Brown and his wife can be seen in the background of one of the early book signing scenes.
  The next film, Angels & Demons, was released on May 15, 2009, with Howard and Hanks returning. It, too, garnered mostly negative reviews, though critics were kinder to it than to its predecessor. As of July 2013, it has a 37% meta-rating at Rotten Tomatoes.[47]
  Filmmakers expressed interest in adapting The Lost Symbol into a film as well.[48][49] The screenplay was being written by Danny Strong, with pre-production expected to begin in 2013.[50] According to a January 2013 article in Los Angeles Times the final draft of the screenplay was due sometime in February,[50] but in July 2013, Sony Pictures announced they would instead adapt Inferno for an October 14, 2016[51] release date with Ron Howard as director, David Koepp adapting the screenplay and Tom Hanks reprising his role as Robert Langdon.[52]
  Imagine Entertainment is set to produce a television series based on Digital Fortress, to be written by Josh Goldin and Rachel Abramowitz.[53]

• Amazon -

  Dan Brown is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Da Vinci Code and, previously, Digital Fortress, Deception Point, and Angels and Demons. He is a graduate of Amherst College and Phillips Exeter Academy, where he spent time as an English teacher before turning his efforts fully to writing. He lives in New England with his wife.

• Dan Brown Website - http://danbrown.com/

  Dan Brown is the author of numerous #1 bestselling novels, including The Da Vinci Code, which has become one of the best selling novels of all time as well as the subject of intellectual debate among readers and scholars. Brown’s novels are published in 56 languages around the world with over 200 million copies in print.
  In 2005, Brown was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by TIME Magazine, whose editors credited him with “keeping the publishing industry afloat; renewed interest in Leonardo da Vinci and early Christian history; spiking tourism to Paris and Rome; a growing membership in secret societies; the ire of Cardinals in Rome; eight books denying the claims of the novel and seven guides to read along with it; a flood of historical thrillers; and a major motion picture franchise.”
  The son of a mathematics teacher and a church organist, Brown was raised on a prep school campus where he developed a fascination with the paradoxical interplay between science and religion. These themes eventually formed the backdrop for his books. He is a graduate of Amherst College and Phillips Exeter Academy, where he later returned to teach English before focusing his attention full time to writing. He lives in New England with his wife.
  Brown’s latest novel, Origin, explores two of the fundamental questions of humankind: Where do we come from? Where are we going?

• Penguin - https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/features/2017/jun/things-you-need-to-know-about-dan-brown-origin/

  5 things to know about Dan Brown's Origin

  There is nothing we love more than getting stuck into a new adventure. Here's what we can tell you about Dan Brown’s latest thriller, Origin...

  image: https://www.penguin.co.uk/content/dam/prh-consumer/penguin/misc/divider-3cm.png

  1. Origin is the fifth book to feature Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of symbology and religious iconography. Symbology is a fictional academic discipline created by Dan Brown. The closest real life disciplines would be iconography, cryptography or semiotics.
  2. The book is primarily set in Spain, a country rich in history, art and religion - the perfect starting point for a Robert Langdon adventure.
  3. This will be the first Robert Langdon thriller to feature modern art; it opens in the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao. Brown’s previous thrillers have all centred around classical art.
  4. The character of Robert Langdon was named after John Langdon, a professor of typography who is known for his complex ambigrams, which play a starring role in Angels and Demons. 
  5. The paradoxical interplay between science and religion is central to the plot of Origin. This is a topic that's always fascinated Dan - perhaps not surprisingly for the son of a church organist and a maths teacher!

  Read more at https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/features/2017/jun/things-you-need-to-know-about-dan-brown-origin/#GTP9tO3TMmzgV0ZC.99

Deborah Parker and Mark Parker. Inferno Revealed: From Dante to Dan Brown

Kristina M. Olson
92.2 (Summer 2015): p508.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 American Association of Teachers of Italian
http://www.aati-online.org/
Deborah Parker and Mark Parker. Inferno Revealed: From Dante to Dan Brown. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
In Inferno Revealed, Deborah Parker and Mark Parker offer a lucid and highly-accessible guide to the ways in which the Comedy constructs itself as an epic and as a classic, and how this has enabled centuries of re-workings and appropriations that have followed its creation. Written for a generalist audience and not for a specialist reader, as the authors themselves note, it will serve current and upcoming generations of students of Dante's poem, not the least of which include students who approach this text through its afterlife in popular culture, students in survey courses, Western Civilization and general education curricula, or those who approach the text from cultural studies itself. The clarity of its prose and lack of heavy annotation lend the book to such readers who might be intimidated by the sheer breadth of knowledge needed to facilitate a comprehension of the Comedy's encyclopedic nature. As a vademecum to those courses that prioritize an understanding of the poem whose afterlife deserves examination, Inferno Revealed can be fruitfully adopted.
The book is divided into two sections, consisting of an introduction, nine chapters, an appendix that includes a timeline of Dante's life and major Florentine / Italian historical events and a brief bibliography. The first half of the book addresses the poem itself, with occasional excursions into its reception, while the last four chapters address the poem's adaptations and re-workings in literature, film, and the arts. The first chapter considers how Dante personalizes his epic by designating himself as the protagonist, and highlights the impact of his personality as poet-turned-pilgrim, where local figures and events take on universal importance. This thesis simplifies the discussion for a generalist audience, granting access into the poem according to one thematic that they link to the prolific fortuna of the poem. They begin by contrasting the epic projects of Virgil and Milton with that of Dante a means of examining the relationship between the poet and the pilgrim, and then between the poet and Vergil, and how this impacts Dante's relationship with the classical tradition. They explicate concepts that are of common currency to specialists--allegory, allusion, Dante's revision of the classical poets, and more--in terms that newcomers to the poem often adopt (such as Dante's pride).
The second chapter, "Scandalous Contemporaries: Dante's People," examines how Dante features contemporary Florentine and Italian figures as mouthpieces for prophecy and history. By focusing on little-known figures such as Francesca da Rimini (Inferno 5), Ciacco (Inferno 6), and Filippo Argenti (Inferno 8), the authors claim that Dante "opens up a new arena for creative exploitation by later writers who personalize the afterlife in imaginative and provocative ways" (44).
The third chapter, "A Divided World: Politics, War, and Exile," continues in the directions of the second chapter by surveying the basic political background to the Inferno: the history of the Guelph/Ghibelline conflict and the origins of Florence itself. They accomplish this by analyzing the cantos of Farinata (Inferno 10), Brunetto Latini (Inferno 15), Mosca dei Lamberti (Inferno 28) and Bocca degli Uberti (Inferno 32), in order to lay out the most salient points about such events as the Buondelmonti marriage and the Battle of Montaperti and their relevance to Dante's poem. In doing so, the authors succeed in explicating the complexities of Florentine and Italian history that stymie new readers of the poem. But they also gesture to how later authors, such as Shelley, draw upon the spirit of political invective and prophecy from Dante in order to lament corruption in their times. The fourth chapter, "Churchmen in Hell," extends this focus on Dante's contemporary historical contexts to the sphere of church politics, ranging from a detailed history of the conflict between church and state to the pervasive presence of corrupt clerics in the poem, highlighting simony and Dante's indictment of Pope Boniface VIII.
Chapter Five, "Hell on Earth: Dante's Treatment of Place," teases out the implications of Eliot's claim that Dante's is a "visual imagination" by emphasizing the ways in which Dante connects thought to place in envisioning the place of this world in the afterlife. In doing so, they explain some of the fundamental parameters of Dante's topography of hell, and also how he connects cities like Florence and Siena to hell, both by locating their citizens in hell, as well as by drawing upon real urban landscapes in visualizing hell.
Chapters Six and Seven are the two chapters that are dedicated to Dante's legacy in literary traditions and popular culture. The former chapter, "The Legacy of Dante's Inferno," by treats the allusions to Dante in such works as those of Milton, Tennyson, Eliot and Pound, in ways that will be of use to the courses dedicated to connecting Dante's poem to other works of canonical literature. The latter chapter, "Popular Adaptations of the Inferno," extends this examination to cinema (Beetlejuice, Hannibal and Se7en) and the visual arts (Sandow Birk), while still treating contemporary fiction (Matthew Pearl's The Dante Club). They frame the difference between such highbrow and lowbrow adaptations of Dante's work in terms of "reverence" and "respect" as a mode of looking upon past works, arguing that "sometimes a decided swerve from an authority is the best testimony to the power of the older text" (140). Indeed, this is one of the admirable positions assumed by the authors of this book, which they explore both in this chapter and in the subsequent chapters (8 and 9) on Dan Brown. The book departs from a place of comprehension of these popular adaptations while remaining skeptical of the idea of "fidelity analysis," a term coined by Eric Rentschler in cinematic studies, where adaptation typically involves a betrayal of the original text. In this way they finesse the idea of fidelity to a more tolerant and expanded notion of how Dante's poem continues to live in the popular imagination. This is a radical viewpoint, insofar as many of us might not be inclined to such a position of critical generosity with Dan Brown's work. Yet, given that the Dan Brown novel--like several other popular re-workings of the Comedy's material--is an inescapable presence for our students, an assessment that acknowledges its importance allows for a critical discussion to take place, whether in scholarly debate or in the classroom. It thus complements the pedagogical projects meant to facilitate the teaching of Dante, such as Guy Raffa's The Complete Danteworlds and the websites designed by Raffa and Parker herself (World of Dante, UVA), in addition to Digital Dante (Columbia University) and DanteLab (Princeton University), and begins a dialogue that can be used to analyze, for example, the extensive catalogue of popular culture sightings on Dante Today (Arielle Saiber, Bowdoin College). In this way and in the many others outlined here, it will greatly serve current and upcoming generations of students of Dante, who are ever-more attuned to the presence of Dante all around us, but who need a point of entry into the Comedy from current perspectives.
KRISHNA M. OLSON
George Mason University
Olson, Kristina M.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th Edition)
Olson, Kristina M. "Deborah Parker and Mark Parker. Inferno Revealed: From Dante to Dan Brown." Italica, vol. 92, no. 2, 2015, p. 508+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA487432550&it=r&asid=d9ada345a6640ba2a45732a7bb463c76. Accessed 5 Oct. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A487432550

Travels with Dan Brown

Harold K. Bush
130.19 (Sept. 18, 2013): p36.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 The Christian Century Foundation
http://www.christiancentury.org
Inferno
By Dan Brown
Doubleday, 480 pp., $29.95
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In the opening pages of his 2003 blockbuster The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown famously contends that "all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate." A decade later, a similarly ludicrous claim to historical accuracy appears on the first page of Inferno. He writes: "Fact: All artwork, literature, science, and historical references in this novel are real." I find the use of the word fact particularly charming.
What should we make of such insistence as the lead salvo in a work of fiction? It is both immediately irresistible and patently absurd. Fact: I'm powerless to say precisely what he means by it--or why he would make such a disingenuous remark. Imagine a narrator stating at the beginning of an Edgar Allan Poe tale: "Fact: Everything you are about to read is true."
For features like this, Brown has been the butt of some of the most deliciously funny jibes ever produced by fellow novelists. Stephen King said that Brown's work was the "intellectual equivalent of Kraft macaroni and cheese," and Salman Rushdie called The Da Vinci Code "a novel so bad it gives bad novels a bad name." Clive James, a poet and a translator of Dante (a key figure in Brown's Inferno), offered this tongue-in-cheek assessment: "I have a great belief in Dan Brown's attractions as a writer. The belief is all the greater because I can't quite define what those attractions are. Certainly they don't have anything to do with his prose, which would be unreadable if it were not so riveting."
I admit that I have the same sort of love-hate relationship with Brown's prose. It is repetitive, materialistic and digressive, and he often uses italics for no apparent reason. It is hard to explain his record-breaking popularity. The New Yorker comments: "The dialogue is dead. As for the rest of the writing, it is not dead or alive. It has no distinction whatsoever."
But tens of millions of readers--like me--haven't been able to put Brown's books down. In the first week after its release, Inferno rang up a whopping 228,961 copies sold in the United Kingdom, and in the United States as of this writing, 4 million copies have already been shipped. And that's peanuts in the career of Dan Brown. His previous five novels sold over 190 million copies altogether, making him a billionaire novelist.
The plot of Inferno is fairly simple. As in The Da Vinci Code, the hero is Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon. The story revolves around Dante's death mask, which reveals how his Divine Comedy is coded into priceless Renaissance paintings and other relics. Langdon deciphers codes that reveal the location of a hidden plague that European billionaire Bertrand Zobrist designed to cull the population of Earth by rendering people sterile.
As Zobrist, a sort of genetics-genius Swiss Bill Gates, races to downsize humanity, black-leather-attired Germans chase after Langdon and his quirky, brilliant and sexy female assistant Sienna (but wait!--is she really who she says she is?), and a huge luxury yacht lurks offshore in the Adriatic, creating illusions of power and wealth. What's not to like?
But I have to wonder: Why would a terrorist leave elaborate clues to his own mad plots? If you've decided to pull the trigger, then why leave detailed codes that some Ivy League egghead might be able to break, thus foiling your crazy scheme? Nearly every page of the novel prompts questions like this. Readers seem to find the implausibility of Brown's major and minor plot devices pleasurable, for whatever reasons.
The novel's settings, including the art and architecture, may be the best part. Brown is like the Rick Steves of novelists: he's quite skilled at evoking the beauty of a city or church or palace. Although Brown gets dissed for his many travelogue inserts, those are often my favorite parts. He makes me want to go back to Florence and Venice; he recalls for me my own wonder and awe at Florence's Duomo and Venice's Doge's Palace. And I now look forward to wandering through the Spice Bazaar of Istanbul.
The book would be half as long if a good editor tore into some of this travel detail (not to mention the vast amount of repetition, often in italics), but I think it's fair to say that Langdon's bourgeois tastes are as intoxicating as the jet-hopping to exotic locales--locales that Brown evidently knows inside and out. Whenever he says that Langdon stopped at this or that coffee bar, or that Langdon far preferred this museum or painting to that one, or that such and such was by far Langdon's favorite street or park in all of Tuscany, I know it's really Brown speaking for himself. But I do make a mental note. It's the good life, albeit in Langdon's tweed jacket and Mickey Mouse watch.
So Brown is an easy target. And yet, as a purveyor of ideologies Brown is endlessly fascinating. For instance, in Inferno the concepts of the "posthuman" and "transhumanism" are crucial (though typically presented in a cartoonish way). The novel invites readers to ask: Where are we going as a race? How must we confront the coming environmental disaster (evidently a given in Brown's universe)? How can technology enhance our abilities as humans, and how is it destructive to our humanity?
Brown's portrayal of the future, mainly through the mad scientist Zobrist, is very threatening and scary. Or is it? I ask, because it's hard to tell where Brown wants to take us with regard to transhumanism. His account of environmental apocalypse is plausible, if somewhat hysterical: he urges us to recognize that this threat is looming and truly frightening. Environmental apocalypticism has been one of the major themes in American literature for some time now, especially in science fiction novels, graphic novels and films.
Near the end of Inferno one of the main characters exclaims, "This all feels like science fiction to me." In fact, Inferno can be analyzed as a variation of popular science fiction because it places before the reader important issues about the uses of science and technology in the present and in the future, and it forecasts where such technologies might take us morally and ethically.
Brown leaves the distinct impression that he largely agrees with the transhumanist philosophy motivating Zobrist's whacked-out methods. Perhaps our planet is facing environmental disasters beyond our imaginations. Perhaps we've all been lulled into a deep sleep, thinking that our attempts at creating a greener world will somehow solve the problems of massive overpopulation, compounded by the decreasing availability of food, water and fuel for the vast majority of humanity. Perhaps we've even allowed science to capture our hearts as a savior and protector, in place of a benevolent God. Inferno may not be great literature like that classic from more than 80 years ago--Brave New World-but it certainly resonates with the themes of Aldous Huxley's elegant masterpiece. Unlike Huxley, however, Brown may be sympathetic to the wrong character.
In our post-9/11 world, laced with all sorts of terror plots and covert madness, perhaps there is something darkly plausible about a bioterrorism scheme such as the one that unfolds in Inferno. The questions Brown asks in the book are worth thinking about. What is the nature of humanity, and where is humanity headed? To what extent do genetic manipulation and human interactions with computers and other machinery change human nature? And what are we going to do, as a civilization, about the 2 or 3 billion humans now forced to live on less food and water than Westerners can even imagine?
In one interview, Brown said: "I always try to choose the gray area and argue both sides. If I've done my job, you close this book saying 'Oh my God, what an enormous problem, and there is no simple solution, and I kind of see Zobrist's point.'" So if you feel even more squeamish about the future after reading Inferno, staring into the abyss of apocalypse, evidently it's by design.
Harold K. Bush is the author of Lincoln in His Own Time and professor of English at Saint Louis University.
Bush, Harold K.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th Edition)
Bush, Harold K. "Travels with Dan Brown." The Christian Century, vol. 130, no. 19, 2013, p. 36+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA347520548&it=r&asid=d9ada345a6640ba2a45732a7bb463c76. Accessed 5 Oct. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A347520548

Book World: Attention, Tom Hanks: Dan Brown's new novel, 'Origin,' is ready for you

Ron Charles
(Oct. 2, 2017): News:
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Byline: Ron Charles
Origin
By Dan Brown
Doubleday. 480 pp. $29.95
---
Dan Brown is back with another thriller so moronic you can feel your IQ points flaking away like dandruff.
"Origin" marks the fifth outing for Harvard professor Robert Langdon, the symbologist who uncovered stunning secrets and shocking conspiracies in "The Da Vinci Code" and Brown's other phenomenally best-selling novels. All the worn-out elements of those earlier books are dragged out once again for Brown to hyperventilate over like some grifter trying to fence fake antiques.
This time around, the requisite earth-shattering secret is a discovery made by Edmond Kirsch, a computer genius with a flair for dramatic presentations and infinite delays. Kirsch has called the world's intelligentsia to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, where he plans to reveal his findings to the world because that's the way complex scientific discoveries are announced by quirky billionaires. We don't hear anything specific about Kirsch's discovery except that it "boldly contradicted almost every established religious doctrine, and it did so in a distressingly simple and persuasive manner."
As you might imagine, this prospect does not please the distressingly simple-minded leaders of the world's religions, who brace themselves for another Copernican body blow. For 100 pages, Brown talks like the pilot on a grounded airplane, assuring us that we'll take off any minute now. But then, when Kirsch finally quiets the crowd at the Guggenheim and begins to reveal his secret, some Roman Catholic zealot shoots him in the head.
Why couldn't it have been me?
Fortunately, Robert Langdon is in the audience that night, and he's determined to unlock Kirsch's PowerPoint presentation and post his discovery online. But the same shadowy assassin who murdered Kirsch will stop at nothing to keep that from happening. It's a cosmic battle between the conservative forces of Spain still nostalgic for Franco and the enlightened forces of science eager to embrace the future.
And so, for the next 300 pages, Langdon dodges death while racing around tourist hotspots in Spain - Casa Mila! Sagrada Familia! - trying to divine Kirsch's computer password. This whole mess could have been avoided if Kirsch had just used "Password123" like the rest of us, but, no, he had to show off and pick a 47-character line of poetry.
Don't worry: Langdon isn't searching in the dark. He gets help from Kirsch's computerized personal assistant, a disembodied voice that sounds like the love child of Spock and Jeeves. And, anticipating the inevitable movie adaptation, Langdon is joined in his panicked quest by the Guggenheim's beautiful director, who happens to be engaged to the prince of Spain.
Brown may not have discovered a secret that threatens humanity's faith, but he has successfully located every cliche in the world. Some sentences are constructed entirely of hand-me-down phrases, like "Edmond was walking a thin line and covering his bases," which sounds like someone playing baseball en pointe. An unholy trinity of words - (BEGIN ITAL)shocking(END ITAL), (BEGIN ITAL)stunning(END ITAL), (BEGIN ITAL)devastating (END ITAL)- are reused like old shopping bags until they're so threadbare they can't hold any meaning at all. And besides those Brownian cycles of false suspense, there are weird stylistic ticks. The characters of "Origin" seem to suffer some kind of jaw dislocation: his jaw dropped, her jaw tightened, his jaw fell. The whole cast needs an oral surgeon.
All right - (BEGIN ITAL)I get it(END ITAL) - this is cotton candy spun into print, but why then must every reference, no matter how pedestrian, be explained in a Wikipedia monotone that Siri would pity? We learn, for instance, that Churchill was a "celebrated British statesman." That the French read from left to right. That Gauguin was "a groundbreaking painter who epitomized the Symbolist movement of the late 1800s and helped pave the way for modern art." That the phrase "phone home" is "a playful allusion to the Spielberg movie about an extraterrestrial named 'ET' who was trying to find his way home." And at the book's most dimwitted point: "According to dictionary.com, a 'regent' is someone appointed to oversee an organization while its leader is incapacitated or absent." (BEGIN ITAL)Another secret revealed!(END ITAL)
All this might be worth enduring if the story's infinitely hyped revelations didn't finally show up at the end of a trial of blood sounding like an old TED Talk. Kirsch's posthumous answers to the big questions - Where did we come from? Where are we going? - will surprise no one technologically savvy enough to operate a cellphone.
Darwinians, fundamentalists, atheists and believers: Pray that this cup pass from you.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th Edition)
Charles, Ron. "Book World: Attention, Tom Hanks: Dan Brown's new novel, 'Origin,' is ready for you." Washington Post, 2 Oct. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA507697760&it=r&asid=8bcc108e0139519854cf47791ab848f4. Accessed 5 Oct. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A507697760

Review: FICTION: When Dan Brown met Dante: Can Steven Poole decode the arcane puzzle of the bestselling author's latest book in just 48 hours?: Inferno by Dan Brown 463pp, Bantam Press, pounds 20

(May 18, 2013): Arts and Entertainment: p11.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 Guardian Newspapers. Guardian Newspapers Limited
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian
Byline: Steven Poole
The tall writer Steven Poole opened the wooden door of the strong house and peered at the small figure on the stone doorstep.
It was a boy. Cradled in his palms the boy nervously proffered a startling object. It was the new book by the famous novelist Dan Brown.
The tall writer took the precious artefact from the nervous boy's hands and thanked him. The miniature human scuttled off. An idling engine revved into life. The writer glanced down the street, then retreated into the residential building. He knew he had better get to work. Looking at his Tag Heuer Swiss watch, he calculated that he had only 48 hours to decode the arcane puzzle of the bestselling author's latest novel.
Peeling away the plump layers of protective wrapping, the writer opened the big book and out fell an obscure document. It was a nondisclosure agreement in threatening legalese. The long-awaited novel was strictly embargoed. Nervously, the freelance writer looked out of the glass window. He saw a bright glint on a distant rooftop. Was that a reflection from the sniper scope of a patient beautiful female assassin dressed in black leather, waiting to shoot him if he let slip any details of the important book too soon?
As the tall writer turned the paper pages with a hungry rapidity, he easily visualised the celebrated symbologist and fancier of English tailoring Robert Langdon running around a series of famous tourist attractions in Florence, Venice and Istanbul. The unflappable hero was accompanied by a pretty blond doctor. They evaded hostile pursuers while trying to uncover the scary threat posed by a renowned biologist with a Dante fixation.
Later that cloudy afternoon, the determined writer sought out a branch of Starbucks, so called because according to a coded engraving by Piranesi that no one knew about but which would have baffled art historians for centuries if anyone had, the natural home of space hero Buck Rogers was among those sidereal forms described by the last word in each part of the famous poet Dante's renowned poem, The Divine Comedy
Stars.
He felt he was getting closer to solving the dark riddle. The engrossed writer continued to read the fat book at the laminated table. He had removed the telltale dustjacket but still had to conceal the board covers since they were decorated with a celebrated engraving by Gustave Dore and also shouted the name of the famous author Dan Brown in white lettering. No one must see him in possession of this valuable object.
In the long book, dramatic things happened in beautiful places. The fact-packed text revealed more tantalising tidbits about secret passageways and old paintings. There were obscure symbols, shiny gadgets, altered masterpieces, and purloined artefacts. There was a powerful secret organisation, and proper science about population growth and tiny viruses. Sometimes, during a convenient lull in the action, the famous Harvard professor Robert Langdon would remember in real time the entire text of a lecture he had once given about Dante.
That evening the tall writer found himself at a party, where a glamorous woman asked him what he had been doing all day. He fixed her feline face with his hazel eyes. Was this a stern test from the sinister people watching him unseen from the murky shadows? There was no way he could admit he had even smelled the forthcoming novel by the famous author Dan Brown. "Nothing!" the writer shouted hoarsely. "And don't touch my Harris Tweed!"
The attractive woman looked at him with a strange glint in her green eyes. "But you aren't wearing any Harris Tweed." Then, with an inviting smile, she gave him a mysterious drink. Then another. At some point blackness descended.
The befuddled writer awoke the next day to find himself in a strange underground cavern, at the centre of which lay a blood-red pool of liquid the colour of red blood. Then he heard a terrifying disembodied whisper. In the blood-red underground strange cavern, the whisper bellowed: "CHTHONIC."
Then the hungover writer woke up, because the previous paragraph had only been a dream. But something in it had seemed familiar. Slowly, he picked up the Italian-themed novel, and turned back to the first page. There, with a shock, he saw it printed: the word "chthonic". And he realised that if the global plot of the page-turning writer Dan Brown was to encourage his fans to read Dante and use words like "chthonic", there was absolutely nothing anyone could do to stop him.
The tall writer began to analyse the blockbusting novel using his close knowledge of conceptology, the famous discipline about thoughts. He saw instantly that the stout book was brilliantly engineered. Its vivid paragraphs were short. Its establishing shots were cinematic. It repeated adjectives and explanatory phrases from one paragraph to the next, perhaps to jog the dulled short-term memory of the tired long-haul flier. It made art and poetry seem glamorous, and mixed them with luxury tourism and scenic chases. It spoke with the seductive urgency of a good-looking someone telling you a brainy secret.
At last, that night, the satisfied writer finished the exciting book. He gazed enigmatically into the middle distance. Then, using only his fleshy brain and a metal laptop, he began to compose his historic review.
To order Inferno for pounds 14 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 or go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop
Steven Poole
Source Citation   (MLA 8th Edition)
"Review: FICTION: When Dan Brown met Dante: Can Steven Poole decode the arcane puzzle of the bestselling author's latest book in just 48 hours?: Inferno by Dan Brown 463pp, Bantam Press, pounds 20." Guardian [London, England], 18 May 2013, p. 11. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA330225693&it=r&asid=a008daef0b143cecced6df4dda73445f. Accessed 5 Oct. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A330225693

One great 'Inferno' sparks another

Bob Minzesheimer
(May 14, 2013): Lifestyle: p02D.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/
Byline: Bob Minzesheimer, @bookbobminz, USA TODAY
A decade ago, Dan Brown says, he got the idea for a novel that would use Inferno, Dante's epic, 14th-century poem envisioning the nine circles of hell, as both "catalyst and inspiration."
Yet he didn't want to follow The Da Vinci Code, his 2003 blockbuster, with "another Italian thriller. It would be too close. And I wanted to put Robert Langdon (his recurring hero) on U.S. soil."
Dante had to wait. In Brown's 2009 best seller, The Lost Symbol, Langdon, a fictional Harvard professor, is summoned to Washington, D.C., to find a kidnapper who leaves clues filled with Masonic symbols.
In Brown's new novel, Inferno (Doubleday), Langdon ends up in Florence, Italy, matching wits with another madman who also leaves clues based on Dante's poem. Langdon's new adversary is a genius in genetic engineering who's obsessed with both global overpopulation and with Dante, whose version of hell, the madman warns, "is not fiction a It is prophecy!"
In an interview, Brown, 48, says he first read Dante's Inferno 30 years ago as a prep school senior studying Italian.
It was "a watered-down Italian version," he recalls, "but it was the darkest, scariest thing I had ever read. I couldn't believe it was written 700 years ago."
He knew the descriptions of hell from the Bible and Greek mythology, "but nothing was as vivid as Dante's hell."
Later, in Brown's research for both Angels & Demons (2001), his first novel to feature Langdon, and The Da Vinci Code, his first best seller, Brown discovered that Dante inspired the images in Michelangelo's famous fresco, Last Judgment, in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican.
"They didn't come from the Bible," Brown says. "They came from the pop literature of its day."
Dante as popular literature?
It's a question Brown addresses in Inferno, filled, like all his novels, with historical asides.
Langdon explains that Inferno was part of Dante's The Divine Comedy, which, by modern standards, "has nothing comedic about it."
But in the 14th century, Langdon adds, Italian literature was "divided into two categories: Tragedy, representing high literature, was written in formal Italian; comedy, representing low literature, was written in the vernacular and geared toward the general population."
Seven centuries later, when fiction is divided between literary and commercial, Brown says he's "proud to be on the commercial side" of that divide.
He says he writes novels, filled with facts, that are designed to be "entertaining and fun to read, but also to inspire intellectual curiosity on topics that I find interesting."
Inferno raises questions about population growth and the Catholic Church's opposition to birth control.
In one scene, a World Health Organization official says the Vatican has "spent enormous amounts of energy and money indoctrinating third-world countries into a belief in the evils of contraception."
Langdon adds, "Who better than a bunch of celibate male octogenarians to tell the world how to have sex?"
Brown, who was criticized by Catholic officials for what they saw as inaccuracies in The Da Vinci Code, ducks a question on whether he agrees with Langdon.
"To answer that defeats the ability of the novel to spark debate," he says. "Controversy is a good thing when it gets people thinking and talking."
Brown lives with his wife, Blythe, his research assistant, in a renovated hunting lodge in Rye, N.H. "It's the kind of house Langdon would love," Brown says. "It's filled with secret tunnels, revolving bookcases, and codes and symbols built in the interior woodwork." He calls it "a piece of art we can live in."
In his files, he has about a dozen ideas for more novels starring Langdon. "They range from a 10-page synopsis to a paragraph. One is just a title."
He's at work on a new novel but won't say anything about it.
Asked about a favorite city he's yet to set a novel in, he mentions Prague, pauses, then adds, "I'm not saying that's my next setting."
For now, he wants that to be a mystery.
CAPTION(S):
photo Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY Dan Brown wants his novels to be "entertaining and fun to read, but also to inspire intellectual curiosity on topics that I find interesting."
Bob Minzesheimer, @bookbobminz, USA TODAY
Source Citation   (MLA 8th Edition)
Minzesheimer, Bob. "One great 'Inferno' sparks another." USA Today, 14 May 2013, p. 02D. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA329758299&it=r&asid=8499434241c804d250bcb29753858a24. Accessed 5 Oct. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A329758299

On a scavenger hunt to save most humans

Janet Maslin
(May 13, 2013): Arts and Entertainment: pC1(L).
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com
INFERNO
By Dan Brown
463 pages. Doubleday. $29.95.
One of the first characters to appear in ''Inferno'' is a spike-haired, malevolent biker chick dressed in black leather. She looks like trouble in more ways than one. What is the girl with the dragon tattoo doing in Dan Brown's new book?
She's scaring Robert Langdon, the tweedy symbologist who stars in Mr. Brown's breakneck, brain-teasing capers. Reader, she will scare you too. The early sections of ''Inferno'' come so close to self-parody that Mr. Brown seems to have lost his bearings -- as has Langdon, who begins the book in a hospital bed with a case of amnesia that dulls his showy wits. When Robert Langdon of ''The Da Vinci Code'' can't tell what day of the week it is, the whole Dan Brown brainiac franchise appears to be in trouble.
But ''Inferno'' is jampacked with tricks. And that shaky opening turns out to be one of them. To the great relief of anyone who enjoys him, Mr. Brown winds up not only laying a breadcrumb trail of clues about Dante (this is ''Inferno,'' after all) but also playing games with time, gender, identity, famous tourist attractions and futuristic medicine. Then there's the bit with the symmetrical clockwise Archimedean spiral, which will have people slowly rotating their copies of ''Inferno,'' trying not to look silly as they scrutinize the rounded calligraphy on Page 255.
There is even a twist built into its 14/5/13 publication date, a numerical anagram of the 3.1415, the approximate value of pi. Why? Because Dante divided hell into circles. Because pi is a hint about measuring them. And because Mr. Brown's readership has never met an embedded secret it didn't like.
As is his wont, Mr. Brown begins with a crazily grandiose prologue, this one a little more unhinged than usual. ''O, willful ignorants!'' exclaims some mystery figure. ''Do you not see the future? Do you not grasp the splendor of my creation?'' That said, this guy with a God complex leaps off a building -- or, as ''Inferno'' puts it, takes his ''final step, into the abyss.'' And then Robert Langdon's beautiful, ponytailed doctor yanks him out of bed so they can begin racing breathlessly through ... where?
Langdon thought he was in Cambridge, Mass., teaching at Harvard. But instead he is in Florence, Italy, with his beloved Mickey Mouse watch (sigh) gone and his tweed jacket (bearing ''Harris Tweed's iconic orb adorned with 13 buttonlike jewels and topped by a Maltese cross'') in tatters. Sienna, the ponytailed doctor, happens to have an I.Q. of 208 and a neighbor whose locally tailored suit and loafers fit Langdon perfectly. So he's looking very debonair as he dashes through the most famed and historically important sights in Florence, trying to figure out what a cylinder hidden inside a titanium tube with a biometric seal and a biohazard symbol is telling him.
It's a tiny projector that offers a scrambled version of a Botticelli image, ''La Mappa dell'Inferno.'' And that sends Langdon and Sienna off to the races, engaging in one of those book-length scavenger hunts that Mr. Brown creates so energetically. Sure, there's an awful lot of touristy detail in ''Inferno.'' And Langdon will always choose a big word over a small one. But ''Inferno'' picks three of the world's most strategically significant, antiquity-rich cities as its settings, and Langdon makes a splendid tour guide and art critic throughout. While it would be unsporting to say exactly which cities are involved, two are Italian. As for the third, it is in both Europe and Asia, and Langdon finds a copy of his own ''Christian Symbols in the Muslim World'' in a museum gift shop at one of its most glorious attractions. ''Now I know the one place on earth that carries that book,'' he thinks to himself.
But it takes more than geography to keep a Brown escapade spinning. The formula also calls for sinister cultism of some sort, and in this case the dark scheming involves overpopulation. One character, Zobrist, is a wealthy Malthusian with a powerful, secretive, high-tech army at his command (Mr. Brown says it is real, but he has given it ''the Consortium'' as a fake name) and a doomsday plot to implement. While talking about controlling the rapid growth in population with the head of the World Health Organization, Zobrist is told, ''We're at seven billion now, so it's a little late for that.'' His reply, a fine specimen of mustache-twirling villainy: ''Is it?''
There's a lot more in ''Inferno'' along these lines. And it all ties together. Dante's nightmare vision becomes the book's visual correlative for what its scientific calculations suggest. And eventually the book involves itself with Transhumanism, genetic manipulation and the potential for pandemics. Just as Mr. Brown's ''Lost Symbol'' tried to stir interest in the noetic sciences (studying mind-body connections). ''Inferno'' puts the idea of a plague front and center, invoking the black plague, its casualty count and its culling effect on mankind. Mr. Brown is more serious than usual when he invokes Dante's dire warning: ''The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.''
But the main emphasis here is hardly on gloom. It is on the prodigious research and love of trivia that inform Mr. Brown's stories (this one makes mincemeat of all those factoid-heavy wannabes, like Matthew Pearl's ''Dante Club''), the ease with which he sets them in motion, the nifty tricks (Dante's plaster death mask is pilfered from its museum setting, then toted through the secret passageways of Florence in a Ziploc bag) and the cliffhangers. (Sienna: ''Don't tell me we're in the wrong museum.'' Robert: ''Sienna, we're in the wrong country.'') There is the gamesmanship that goes with crypto-bits like ''PPPPPPP.'' (Sienna: ''Seven Ps is ... a message?'' Robert, grinning: ''It is. And if you've studied Dante, it's a very clear one.'')
And finally there is the sense of play that saves Mr. Brown's books from ponderousness, even when he is waxing wise about some ancient mystery or architectural wonder. Once the globe-trotting begins in earnest, private planes figure in the story and Langdon calls his publisher to ask for one. No, says the publisher, then adds: ''Let me rephrase that. We don't have access to private jets for authors of tomes about religious history. If you want to write 'Fifty Shades of Iconography,' we can talk.''
Guess what: Mr. Brown has already written it. And then some.
CAPTION(S):
PHOTOS: PHOTO (C1); Dan Brown (PHOTOGRAPH BY DAN COURTER) (C4)
By JANET MASLIN
Source Citation   (MLA 8th Edition)
Maslin, Janet. "On a scavenger hunt to save most humans." New York Times, 13 May 2013, p. C1(L). General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA329552046&it=r&asid=9c667cf41af40d1a56b6776c2267393b. Accessed 5 Oct. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A329552046

Olson, Kristina M. "Deborah Parker and Mark Parker. Inferno Revealed: From Dante to Dan Brown." Italica, vol. 92, no. 2, 2015, p. 508+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA487432550&asid=d9ada345a6640ba2a45732a7bb463c76. Accessed 5 Oct. 2017. Bush, Harold K. "Travels with Dan Brown." The Christian Century, vol. 130, no. 19, 2013, p. 36+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA347520548&asid=d9ada345a6640ba2a45732a7bb463c76. Accessed 5 Oct. 2017. Charles, Ron. "Book World: Attention, Tom Hanks: Dan Brown's new novel, 'Origin,' is ready for you." Washington Post, 2 Oct. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA507697760&asid=8bcc108e0139519854cf47791ab848f4. Accessed 5 Oct. 2017. "Review: FICTION: When Dan Brown met Dante: Can Steven Poole decode the arcane puzzle of the bestselling author's latest book in just 48 hours?: Inferno by Dan Brown 463pp, Bantam Press, pounds 20." Guardian [London, England], 18 May 2013, p. 11. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA330225693&asid=a008daef0b143cecced6df4dda73445f. Accessed 5 Oct. 2017. Minzesheimer, Bob. "One great 'Inferno' sparks another." USA Today, 14 May 2013, p. 02D. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA329758299&asid=8499434241c804d250bcb29753858a24. Accessed 5 Oct. 2017. Maslin, Janet. "On a scavenger hunt to save most humans." New York Times, 13 May 2013, p. C1(L). General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA329552046&asid=9c667cf41af40d1a56b6776c2267393b. Accessed 5 Oct. 2017.

• London Guardian
  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/04/origin-dan-brown-review-robert-langdon
  Word count: 938

  Origin by Dan Brown review – fun in its own galumphing way

  In his fifth blockbuster outing, professor of symbology Robert Langdon takes on the battle between science and religion

  Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and Sienna (Felicity Jones) in the crypt of St Mark’s Basilica in Inferno (2016). Photograph: Jonathan Prime

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  Sam Leith
  Wednesday 4 October 2017 12.58 BST
  O
  rigin is the fifth of Dan Brown’s gazillion-selling books starring Robert Langdon. As fans of 2003’s The Da Vinci Code will remember, Langdon is professor of religious symbology at Harvard. But, like renowned academic archaeologist Indiana Jones, you seldom see him marking term papers or preparing lectures.
  Instead – in this case dressed in a tailcoat throughout – he spends his time careering between renowned buildings (the Bilbao Guggenheim, Barcelona’s Sagrada Família and so on) solving Crystal Maze-style puzzles, being chased by baddies and uncovering world-changing secrets.

  Dan Brown: cracking the code of his enduring appeal
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  It’s all very reassuring. As usual our hero has a “vivacious, strong-minded beauty” chastely in tow (despite being the future Queen of Spain, Ambra gets called by her first name; our hero is always “Langdon”). And the four aspects of his personality are all present and correct: the claustrophobia, the eidetic memory, the tendency to think in italics (“What secret had Edmond unveiled?”), and of course the Mickey Mouse watch, which I at first thought had been retired for, say, a Tissot – but there it is on page 376.
  So: the story. This one’s all set in Spain. Langdon’s friend, an Elon Muskish playboy tech genius called Edmond Kirsch, is giving a talk at the Guggenheim at which he promises to reveal the secret to life, the universe and everything – and which he promises will make all the world’s religions redundant at a stroke. But just as he’s giving his little PowerPoint presentation, an assassin shoots him and within the hour Langdon is on the run with Ambra (the aforementioned future Queen of Spain) in “a deadly game of cat-and-mouse”.
  Langdon is essentially after Edmond’s password so that they can get the PowerPoint up and running again and change the world. But, of course, he doesn’t know whom to trust (apart from Winston, Edmond’s quantum-computer AI assistant, and the renowned future Queen of Spain) and the whole place is seething with sinister conservative archbishops, mysterious puppetmasters and Franco-fetishising schismatic sects. There’s even brief mention of an eyeless Anti-Pope, which lifts the spirits. After the baddies in the previous novels (one of whom boasted a “massive double-headed phoenix on his chest [which] glared … through nipple eyes like some kind of ravenous vulture”), the morose retired admiral who serves as the muscle in this one seems a bit beige.

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  Dan Brown: complaining that he can’t write is like complaining that crisps are crunchy. Photograph: Maria Laura Antonelli/Rex Features
  I’m marginally below average at tumbling to where thrillers are going, and I guessed what was really going on – who was pulling the strings – by (actually, on) page 241, but that didn’t much hamper my enjoyment. And at the end, we get the secret of life, the universe and everything: the presentation unfolds over 30 cod-sciencey pages, and we learn how human life came to be (something to do with entropy) and what the future holds (something to do with technology). Yay!

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  Obviously, Brown hasn’t got any better at writing since his last outing. If there were an antonym for “unerring” – something that captured the way that over more than 400 pages he avoids producing a good sentence even by accident – it would be the one for Brown. He still lobs modifiers about like an out-of-control tennis machine. He still drops in Wikipedia-style paragraphs of factual boilerplate: “The Holy seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Madrid – Catedral de la Almudena – is a robust neoclassical cathedral situated adjacent to Madrid’s Royal Palace …” “Uber’s ubiquitous ‘on-demand driver’ service had taken the world by storm over the past few years. Via a smartphone, anyone requiring a ride could instantly connect with a growing army of Uber drivers who made extra money by hiring out their cars as improvised taxis …”

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  Everything is “renowned”, “famed”, “famous”, “celebrated” or “well known”, such as “the well-known American professor Robert Langdon”, the “celebrated masterpiece … by French Postimpressionist Paul Gauguin”, “the renowned 19th-century German philosopher” Nietzsche, or “the museum’s most famous work – El [sic] Guernica”.
  But complaining that Brown can’t write is like complaining that crisps are crunchy. And you know what? It doesn’t really matter at all. The book is fun in its galumphing way. And the longer he keeps earnestly plugging away, the more the reader warms to him. There’s a winning innocence to Brown’s work, especially as rather than just produce a chase thriller with added sudoku, he is determined to take on the most fundamental issues of human existence. Dan Brown: novelist of ideas.
  • Sam Leith’s Write to the Point is published by Profile on 12 October.
  • Origin is published by Bantam. To order a copy for £17 (RRP £20) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.

• New York Times Book Review
  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/30/books/dan-brown-origin.html
  Word count: 1806

  The World According to Dan Brown
  By SARAH LYALLSEPT. 30, 2017
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  Dan Brown at his home in Rye Beach, N.H.

  Credit
  Cody O'Loughlin for The New York Times
  RYE BEACH, N.H. — Anyone who has read Dan Brown’s work — and with 200 million copies of his books in print, you know who you are — is familiar with his signature technique of inserting little chunks of expository information into the narrative. Among the topics addressed in his latest thriller, “Origin”: the wide-ranging talents of Winston Churchill, the elusive appeal of abstract art, the exciting peculiarities of Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia cathedral and the latest insane developments in the world of artificial intelligence.
  This is central to the Brown approach, because he himself prefers literature that is instructive and, ideally, not wholly invented. “I feel like if I’m going to take time reading, I better be learning,” he said recently. He was sitting in his large and cunningly designed house here in the New Hampshire countryside. Of his novels, he said: “This is the kind of fiction I would read if I read fiction.”
  “Origin” is Mr. Brown’s eighth novel. It finds his familiar protagonist, the brilliant Harvard professor of symbology and religious iconography Robert Langdon, embroiled once more in an intellectually challenging, life-threatening adventure involving murderous zealots, shadowy fringe organizations, paradigm-shifting secrets with implications for the future of humanity, symbols within puzzles and puzzles within symbols and a female companion who is super-smart and super-hot.
  As do all of Mr. Brown’s works, the new novel does not shy away from the big questions, but rather rushes headlong into them. Here the question is: Can science make religion obsolete?
  As the story begins, Edmond Kirsch — “billionaire computer scientist, futurist, inventor and entrepreneur” — is preparing to present a new discovery to an eager crowd (and to the world, via the internet) at the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain. He has promised that this announcement, the details of which are enticingly withheld until the very end of the book, will upend people’s view of religion by proving irrefutably that life can be created using the laws of science, thus excising God from the equation. (The theory is real, borrowed from the M.I.T. physicist Jeremy England.)
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  “Origin,” is to be published by Doubleday Oct. 3, with an initial printing of 2 million copies, eventually extending to several dozen countries in 42 languages, according to the publisher. Readers will find in it a familiar swirl of big ideas and nonstop action, so that those who aren’t enchanted by the erudition can find relief in the plot, and vice versa.
  Mr. Brown, 53, spent four years writing and researching the book. He is nothing if not disciplined. He rises at 4 a.m. each day and prepares a smoothie comprising “blueberries, spinach, banana, coconut water, chia seeds, hemp seeds and … what’s the other kind of seed?” he asked. “Flax seeds, and this sort of weird protein powder made out of peas.” He also makes so-called bulletproof coffee, with butter and coconut oil, which he says changes “the way your brain processes the caffeine” so as to sharpen your mind.
  His computer is programmed to freeze for 60 seconds each hour, during which time Mr. Brown performs push-ups, situps and anything else he needs to do. Though he stops writing at noon, it’s hard for him to get the stories out of his head. “It’s madness,” he said of his characters. “They talk to you all day.”
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  Patricia Wall/The New York Tiimes
  Mr. Brown’s books have made him rich, but he does not have the aura of a rich person. His house, concealed behind gates, is not so much the home of a flashy millionaire as that of a person with the means to alter his surroundings in any wildly idiosyncratic way he (and his wife) want to.
  He showed me around on condition that I didn’t present the house as “incredibly ostentatious.”
  No, more like fantastically bonkers. Push a button on a library shelf, and it swings around to reveal a secret shelf that contains the first Brown book (“The Giraffe, the Pig, and The Pants On Fire,” written when he was 5) and an exotic scientific-looking object that turns out to be the antimatter prop used in the film of “Angels and Demons.” Touch the corner of a painting in the living room, and it slides aside to expose a hidden room whose walls are decorated with gold records, awarded to Mr. Brown as a result of vast audiobook sales in Germany.
  Outside a bathroom is an antique Bible opened to Job 38:11 — “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further.” (“That means it’s occupied,” Mr. Brown said.) The inside of the door is covered top to bottom with a replica of a page from one of Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks, written in backward handwriting. “It’s one of his famous quotes, which you cannot read until you close this door and position yourself on the toilet or at the sink and read it in the mirror,” Mr. Brown said.
  Here is Leonardo’s celebrated painting “The Virgin of the Rocks,” or at least the reproduction used in the film of “The Da Vinci Code.”
  Also, look over there. It’s the “Mona Lisa,” smiling enigmatically from her canvas on a different wall.
  “That’s a reproduction too, to save you from asking,” Mr. Brown said. (Such is the power Mr. Brown can exert on an institution that even the haughty Louvre, which has the real paintings, offers “Da Vinci Code”-themed tours and admits on its website that the book and film have increased “Mona Lisa’s” popularity.)
  The house is also full of paintings, sculptures and unexpected additional works by Mr. Brown’s wife, Blythe, who has a taste for the macabre. A dining room sideboard contains a tableau featuring taxidermied animals like a fox and a pheasant; a table in the kitchen holds a Hieronymus Bosch-like sculpture replete with tiny skeletons and other objects churning together in a hellish configuration.
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  “Blythe has a fixation with death,” Mr. Brown said cheerfully. “Once she literally took me on a date to a cemetery.” The two met more than 20 years ago in Los Angeles, where Mr. Brown moved after graduating from Amherst College. He grew up in Exeter, N.H., and went to high school at Phillips Exeter Academy, where his father taught math. (I was at the school as well and knew him slightly.)
  At the time, Mr. Brown was a not-successful musician; his future wife, more than a decade older than he is, was the director of artistic development at the National Academy for Songwriters. Because of their unequal work relationship, they dated in secret for seven years, Mr. Brown said, at one point even attending the Grammys together, along with fake dates, to conceal the romance.
  Among other features of their house: a shirt signed by the members of Germany’s 2014 World Cup-winning soccer team; a cantilevered staircase built right out of the wall, with no supports from above or below; and two pillars that are exact replicas of those in Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, which appeared in “The Da Vinci Code” and was quickly overrun by Brown enthusiasts searching for the Holy Grail.
  Downstairs, there’s a medieval suit of armor, moved here after an unsuccessful sojourn in a more prominent spot.
  “We built a niche for it in the library, and it was just overkill,” Mr. Brown said. “It sort of felt like ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ or something.”
  Mr. Brown does not have a lot in common with Edmond Kirsch, the futurologist and entrepreneur of his book, but they do share a car: the Tesla Model X, the least expensive version of which costs about $80,000. Among other things, it can drive and park itself.
  Its owner seems a little bit bemused to find himself in possession of such a rarefied object. “I’m not a car person,” he said. “Three years after ‘The Da Vinci Code’ came out, I still had my old, rusted Volvo. And people are like, ‘Why don’t you have a Maserati?’ It never occurred to me. It wasn’t a priority for me. I just didn’t care.”
  Eventually, he bought a Lexus hybrid SUV, and then after that a Tesla sports car, which also did not sit easily with him.
  “I felt like a jerk,” he said. “ I felt like I needed a gold chain and a ponytail or something. This one feels like the minivan of Teslas.”
  He and I got into the car, which indeed looked kind of minivan-esque until it accelerated from 0 to 60 in under three seconds, right in the (not very long) driveway, and then switched lanes by itself on the highway.
  We were on the way to Exeter, where Mr. Brown was going to a service in honor of his mother, who died several months ago. (“Origin” is dedicated to her; her initials, C.G.B., appear, very faintly, on the back cover of the book.) Mr. Brown credits his father, now 81, with instilling in him a love of science, math and intellectual puzzles, and his mother, who was religious but became disillusioned with church politics, with instilling in him a wonder for the mysteries of the world.
  Though Mr. Brown comes out strongly in favor of science, both in person and in his novels, he cannot give up the possibility that there is something else out there.
  “It’s probably an intellectual weakness,” he said, “but I look at the stars and I say, ‘there’s something bigger than us out there.’ ”

• London Telegraph
  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/origin-dan-brown-review-light-action-heavy-historical-factoids/
  Word count: 405

  Origin by Dan Brown, review: light on action, heavy on historical factoids

  2

  Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon in the 2009 film adaptation of Dan Brown's Angels & Demons

  Jake Kerridge
  4 October 2017 • 2:31pm
  “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something.” Dan Brown has a character in his new novel quote this remark by Winston Churchill (“the celebrated British statesman, … military historian, orator and Nobel Prize-winning author,” he reminds us, with his usual consideration for those of his readers who have been lobotomised). 
  There is something a tad self-congratulatory in this line being invoked by an author who has been denounced by the Vatican, and you get the feeling that Brown is out to ruffle a few more clerical feathers in this book. Has the Vatican realised that anathematising an author only increases his sales? We’ll see.

  Turkish-language copies of 'Origin' lining the shelves at a bookshop in Ankara; the novel is up for sale in 13 countries Credit: Getty
  It begins with Edmond Kirsch, a Jobs-y technology magnate, assassinated at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao as he prepares to reveal a discovery he has made about the origins of life on Earth that will consign organised religion to the dustbin.
  His and our old friend, the “symbologist” Robert Langdon, is soon dodging assassins in order to broadcast Kirsch’s theories to the world, assisted by the Guggenheim’s beautiful director Dr Penélope Cruz (that’s not really her name, but Brown has clearly tailored the character so that the Spanish stunner can be cast opposite Tom Hanks).
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  Dan Brown in Berlin, October 2016 Credit: AP
  Brown is a lousy storyteller and a very good communicator, never passing up an opportunity to share a fascinating historical or artistic factoid with the reader at the expense of building up tension, taking pains to frame complex ethical and scientific debates in a way that the layman will understand.
  One reason why this book is more interesting than some of his more recent efforts is that there is less action, fewer puzzles and cryptograms, than usual: he concentrates more on intellectual ideas, which are what really excites him. One day he will write a book which consists entirely of Langdon and a friend conducting a Socratic dialogue while sitting quietly, and it will be his best. 

• Entertainment Weekly
  http://ew.com/books/2017/10/02/dan-brown-origin-book-review/
  Word count: 451

  Dan Brown doesn't mess with his formula in Origin: EW review
  Dalene Rovenstine@RealDaleneR
  Posted on October 2, 2017 at 5:13pm EDT

  Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
  Origin
  type:
  Book
  genre:
  Thriller
  publisher:
  Doubleday
  pages:
  480
  publication date:
  10/03/17
  author:
  Dan Brown

  We gave it a
  B
  Over and over Origin asks the questions Where do we come from? Where are we going? They are questions about humanity — but they could just as easily be questions about Robert Langdon.
  The Mickey Mouse watch-wearing, claustrophobic, always-near-trouble symbology professor is back in Dan Brown’s latest book. And just like he was in his original exploits (Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code), Dr. Langdon is once again wrapped up in a global-scale event that could have massive ramifications on the world’s religions.
  The book begins when Langdon travels to Spain at the request of Edmond Kirsch, a former student who is about to make an earth-shattering announcement at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (he’s issued a cryptic press release that says, “Futurist Edmond Kirsch to announce discovery that will change the face of science”). Langdon arrives without having any idea what Kirsch plans to say — and when the event goes tragically awry, it’s up to him to track down Kirsch’s discovery and unveil it to the world.
  All the requisite trappings of a Langdon adventure are here: a smart, beautiful female sidekick (albeit an engaged one), plenty of puzzles and clues, and — of course — lots of religious iconography. Plus, there’s one 2017 update: Langdon gets assistance throughout the book from an AI that could run circles around Siri and Alexa. Siri may know how to give walking directions, but she’s never helped anyone dodge police while doing it. But other than that technological addition, Brown doesn’t mess much with his formula: Origin is similar in format, tone, and style to the other books in the series. In other words, people who have never liked Brown’s books won’t find anything to change their minds here, but his legions of fans will likely find this new thrill ride hard to put down.
  As he does in all his novels, Brown spackles over any weaknesses in the plot with the richness of his true-to-life details. His extensive research on art, architecture, and history informs every page. Origin‘s characters may be questioning faith and science, but it’s hard to get too bogged down in the issues when the main character is on a life-or-death adventure in Spain’s most beautiful museums and landmarks. B

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