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Dan Brown's novel Digital Fortress is amateurish at best. This book by the "#1 New York Times bestselling author" makes a mockery of intelligence - both
of the NSA and of the readers.
Really, one should not put too much faith in those reviews. Those ellipses could hide a lot of things. For example, " Digital Fortress is a really good book..." It may mean
" Digital Fortress is a really good book. NOT!" The plot is intriguing enough - an unbreakable code written
by a renegade NSA cryptographer that endangers the whole intelligence-gathering capability of the United States government
- but the execution is sloppy. When you realize that the top cryptographer of the National Security Agency does not even recognize
a simple anagram of the villain's name, then you know you are in for a tedious and often unintelligent read.
If you still want to read the book, then do not read this further - it might ruin what little surprise there
is in the book.
Other boo-boos include the head of the NSA not knowing what a computer worm is. Hello? And you are
supposed to be the boss of all computer geeks in government? Also, it seems that the author is in love with the phrase "every
third grader with a modem..." He used that one at least twice, probably in the mistaken belief that it is catchy. Catchy,
yes. Overworked, most definitely.
And what's with David's endless chase for the passkey? He goes from one lead to the next - all in a matter of hours!
How implausible can you get? Besides, it gets irritating after a while. It reminds me of those old Super Mario games. You
know, "Thank you for saving me, Mario! But our Princess is in another castle." Like duh?!
The writing is very telephatic
for it conveys the result of the action two or three pages before the event actually happens. Every reader with half a brain
could figure out the anagram easily. Or, as the author is fond of saying, every third-grader with a modem would know what
the code is. It practically jumps out at you! And the NSA's top brass could not figure it out? Either Brown is trying to tell
us that the government is inept - maybe - or that he is inept.
What is worse is that Brown leads the readers
down various possibilities one would not readily think of - that is, possibilities aside from the obviously correct one, which
the reader has already figured out for himself a few pages ago.
This is the "new master of smart thrills?"
Far from it.
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