Dan Brown's Digital Fortress Is Horrible Execution Of A Good Concept
Digital Fortress by Dan Brown
Malcolm Gladwell is widely regarded as the author who re-popularized the concept of "the tipping point", that time at which an item or issue becomes part of the public consciousness. Gladwell is therefore probably one of the better people to ask how a book as pedestrian as The Da Vinci Code becomes the publishing story of its time. One suspects that the more ordinary fare Dan Brown wrote pre-Code, such as Digital Fortress, are more indicative of his body of work. Certainly the book's popularity was nowhere near as popular upon its initial release as when it became part of the best seller's earlier collection.
Brown's target this time is not the Catholic Church, but the National Security Agency (NSA) and the shadowy world of uber-cryptographers. These are the people who can break a code written in Summerian, even if the document to be translated was originally written in an obscure ancient Greek dialect and uses base 6 math. These people are good.
Besides his look at this difficult-to-understand area, Brown deserves credit for the attention he gives describing his settings, especially Spain. Other than those two areas, however, there is not much to recommend Digital Fortress to readers.
The Plot In Exactly One Hundred Words
The NSA has developed a program that can completely decrypt any digital transmission without leaving a trace. The program and its team of digital warriors is led by Susan Fletcher, a beautiful, brilliant scientist. Susan, her boss and her team have to combat someone who can compromise their systems and race the clock to prevent that from happening. Along the way, her fiancé (an academic, not a government employee) is dragged into the story. Susan is smart, but always seems to be just behind the bad guys until Brown makes fixes everything with a series of slam dunk plot developments.
What Works Well
The plot pacing works relatively well, and the computer side of the story is very well done and shows a lot of research.
What Doesn't Work As Well
Unfortunately, the list of what doesn't work well in Digital Fortress is much longer than the list of what does work well. First, no one sends non-government employees on missions in foreign countries, especially when national security is concerned. That sub-plot, necessary to give Susan personal as well professional conflict, is so convoluted that it virtually makes the story unreadable.
Also, at times the misdirection that Brown applies to the events in Digital Fortress instead seem to shine a bright light on the events they were to obscure. This contributes to the end story buildup being especially muddy, leaving the reader to slog through the mystery.
While not looking for a mystery to be wrapped up as neatly as a Scooby-Doo episode, a little more clarity would have helped a great deal.
And finally, as is often the case with Brown's writing, the antagonists seem formulaic.
The Bottom Line, Dog Earred Pages and All
Don't expect Digital Fortress to supply an edge-of-your-seat thriller or anything worthy of the Da Vinci buildup. The story is a barely adequate thriller (decent idea, horrible execution) with Brown's now standard dose of conspiracy theories and boilerplate, boring adventure. Only the cryptography sub-plot saves the story for anyone remotely interested in that sort of thing.
Five Things To Remember From This Review
1. This isn't The Da Vinci Code. I'm not sure what it is.
2. Digital Fortress was written before Da Vinci.
3. The NSA action is so off-target that it wrecks Brown's research rep.
4. A barely serviceable thriller when nothing else is available on the shelf.
5. The pacing is adequate, but his is not a page-turner that will keep you awake at night.
