THE LOST SYMBOL
By Dan Brown
Bantam Press. 510 pages. £8.99
ISBN 978-0-59305-427-7
Well over one million copies of The Lost Symbol were sold on its first day on the shelves. It looks set to follow The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons as a great money-spinner for Dan Brown.
So what makes this a hit? Would it be the cliched characters (a deranged baddie, who is ‘pulled onwards by destiny’s gravity’, a brainy hero and a scientist sidekick)? Or perhaps the wearisomely breathless plot which speeds from one grand location to another? Maybe it’s the obvious or patently silly twists in the story? I suppose it could be the paragraphs of dubious facts dumped awkwardly into dialogue.
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