This is a book review of Digital Fortress by Dan Brown. My second time around reading this book, which the first time around I enjoyed. Did the second reading change my impression?
The book at it’s core is about codes, unbreakable codes and the U.S. agency, the NSA wants to keep breaking them. Unfortunately it looks like an ex-NSA employee has created an unbreakable algorithm and has decided to auction it off, well until he mysteriously dies in Spain. Chuck in a NSA employee Susan Fletcher, her finance David Becker (not NSA), Susan’s boss and an assassin. David is sent to Spain to recover the key to the code being auctioned and you know you are on a roller coaster ride within a handful of pages. It is a Dan Brown book after all.
So Dan is writing about codes again. For hundreds of years codes have been important, to securely send a message and if intercepted, prove difficult to break. These days encryption is ever present and to break this complex data requires serious computer power and clever programming. If the ability to unencrypt, aka crack data became impossible then the criminals would be given a huge advantage.
Okay back to this being a Dan Brown book. David Becker is really another version of Robert Langdon from the Da Vinci Code. If you enjoyed that book, movie or both, you most likely will enjoy this. The book doesn’t give you a sense of history as the Da Vinci Code does, this is codes in the modern era and with expensive technology. Unlike the Da Vinci Code this story plays out in two locations, Spain and the U.S., both equally contributing.
I will be honest on rereading this book, the storyline towards the end seemed more implausible, just too much luck involved, but that’s as far as a spoiler as I will go.
I enjoyed this book, it’s not a Da Vinci Code, but it’s good, even after a second reading. If you’re a Dan Brown fan it is definitely a must read.
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