Philip Hensher

Too much information | 23 September 2009

The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown

Freemasons have been getting steadily less glamorous since their apotheosis in The Magic Flute. Nowadays, one thinks of them in connection with short-sleeved, polyester shirt-and-tie sets, pens in the top pocket, sock-suspenders and the expression ‘My lady wife’. I honestly can’t see them guarding the secrets of the universe. Dan Brown’s new conspiracy theory cosmic thriller, portraying freemasonry as a wise secret sect, starts at a considerable disadvantage. Ends there, too.

Robert Langdon — was there ever a dimmer name for an action hero? — is lured away from his cryptological studies by an invitation from a wise old acquaintance, Peter Solomon, in Washington. Or so it seems; because when Langdon turns up at the lecture theatre, in one of Washington’s most prestigious venues, as Brown would put it, there is no one there. Instead, there is Solomon’s hand, cut off and newly tattooed with occult symbols, stuck on a spike and pointing upwards at the official frescoes. (They bear a secret meaning, of course).

Brown’s The Da Vinci Code itchily chased around continents in search of enlightenment. This one stays very much where it is, and stolidly pursues hidden chambers, hollowed-out obelisks and secret stairwells within the same square mile of Washington DC. It seems a waste of a setting not to make any serious use of politics here, particularly when secret societies and freemasonry are in the picture. This may be the very first novel set in Washington DC without a villainous part for the British ambassador.

But Brown’s attention is elsewhere, largely on writing paragraphs which the DC tourist board can reproduce unamended, and perhaps already has. Brown has no gift for the evocation of place, and I wonder how much of the prose he has read in recent years has been written by estate agents.

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