Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Head and shoulders above the rest !

President Zachary Herney, the incumbent in a hotly contested presidential race, is a strong supporter of a publicly funded NASA, open to the scientific community at large. His opponent, Senator Sedgewick Sexton, has made overspending and mismanagement at NASA his campaign hot button issue and clearly favours privatization of space research. NASA's timely discovery of a meteorite buried deep within an arctic glacier that provides positive long sought for proof of the existence of extra-terrestrial life seems to be the needed success that will put a lock on their reputation with the US taxpayer and a stranglehold on Herney's successful re-election. But when Herney's hand-picked team of civilian experts and intelligence analysts begin to sniff out the possibility of scientific fraud, Dan Brown treats us to a magnificent display of high intensity action and fireworks; the best and the worst of Washington political posturing, cover ups and power plays; and a deadly team of Delta Force assassins assigned to ensure the fraud is kept under wraps.

But, as exciting and as imaginative as it was, it wasn't actually the plot or the fast-paced action that put Deception Point into the category of one of the finest thrillers I've ever had the pleasure of reading.

Unlike so many other thrillers, Dan Brown has not sacrificed characterization for plot. In fact, he has treated us to a marvelously broad cast of realistic, well-developed, human, credible characters that fairly leaped off the page - Marjorie Tench, a bone deep ugly spinster bitch with an incredible set of finely, honed killer political instincts; Michael Tolland, a charismatic scholar who like David Suzuki, David Attenborough or Jacques Cousteau, seemed to be able to translate real scientific knowledge unerringly into a well understood and widely appealing television format; Rachel Sexton, the daughter of the self-centered presidential hopeful senator, struggling to distance herself from politics and retain her credibility as a skilled intelligence analyst with the NRO; and Gabrielle Ashe, the starry-eyed aide who succumbed to Sexton's political reputation and got trapped in a career-killing sex scandal.

The second feature that separated Deception Point from other lesser lights in the thriller genre was his exhilarating use of technology! In hindsight, Brown's one sentence author's note prefacing the story provided that little extra "wow" factor that left me awestruck -

"All technologies described in this novel exist."

As I was reading the story, I flagged no less than a dozen examples of astonishing gadgetry that I was completely unaware of. One example to whet your appetite:

" ... new experimental `IM' weaponry - Improvised Munitions - snow rifles that compacted snow into ice pellets, desert rifles that melted sand into glass projectiles, water-based firearms that shot pulses of liquid water with such force that they could break bones."

What do you think? Does it sound like I enjoyed this one? If you like thrillers, get this one on to the top of your reading pile today.

Paul Weiss