Deception Point

    Dan Brown will have to write an awfully amazingly stupendous novel in order to replace this as my favorite of all his books. I am re-reading them all, and second time around was no different than the first. Those 736 pages flew by as I gripped with white knuckles, setting it down with only great difficulty. It is one of his two thrillers that do not use Robert Langdon as a character, and I wish he would do more. The energy flows seamlessly in this one, with none of the annoying intrusions of character conversations about historical or symbolic information that puts a halt on the momentum. Not that there is not technical information here—there's lots of it, but it is incorporated into the text in a much more natural way that enhances the flow rather than interrupts it. In all, a masterpiece of genius and suspense that has not, perhaps received the recognition it is due.
    First published in 2001, before Brown had gained his immense public notice with The Da Vinci Code, it covers a controversial subject—NASA, and its waste of taxpayer funds. But it is also about a presidential campaign, and the plotting that goes on behind the scenes. Brown has fortunately made his president and contender fictitious, rather than choosing to use real names, giving the story more credibility. I have read some authors who include real people, which gives the story, actually, a phoniness and sense of name-dropping to capture audience attention. Trump is sometimes a character used, in those cases.
    Yuk. Gag me with a spoon. Those books go into the Goodwill donations box.
    Anyways, the incumbent, Zachary Herney, has chosen to run a positive campaign without the scandalous mudslinging which has become such an important element in politics. He is actually a man of very high morals and honesty. (HA! Brown must have been writing about an America on a different planet!) I can't remember one of those since . . . Gosh? When? But, in any case, he is way down in the polls. So, as one might expect, even though Herney is honest, there are others who wish to remain on the White House staff whose morals are not quite as squeaky-clean.
    His opponent, Senator Sedgewick Sexton, however, is pretty confident he has the election clinched. He is nothing like the incumbent. His inner machinery runs on money, power and greed. Ah, there, that's more like it—typical American politics. And the main point of contention is NASA funding—Sexton wants to privatize it to relieve taxpayer burdens from an agency that has had little real success since the early days of space travel. Privatization, however, would unleash a flurry of wealthy corporations without ethical regard to treating outer space with honor and respect, as the big corporations have proven with their abusive treatment of the oceans, land, and everything else they can get their hand on. Sexton also has other motivations for supporting a privately-run NASA: Immense sums of (illegal) campaign contributions, which are gradually revealed as the story moves along.
    His most valued campaign assistant is Gabrielle Ashe, a young black recent graduate who has a knack for knowing. Unfortunately, she has, in a moment of passion, a sexual indiscretion with Sexton, one she deeply regrets and vows to never do again, which she does not. She enters, starry-eyed with the dazzle of Sexton and the whole political process. However, she is honest and genuine about her work, which forces her to see through the lies, especially those of her own candidate. Her exit from the political scene is not only through a different set of eyes, but hysterically funny—the funniest ending of all Dan Brown's novels.
    And then there's Rachel Sexton, daughter of the Senator, who bears him a rather seething hatred—not only for being a cold, greedy lying phony, but for her dear mother's untimely death, indirectly from his neglect, in addition to his life of cheating.
    As in all Dan Brown's books, there is a mix of fact and fiction. He states at the beginning that (in addition to the obviously real organizations and agencies, like NASA), the Delta Force, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the Space Frontier Foundation along with all of the technologies mentioned, are real. (All the technologies? Really Dan? Hmm.) Well, whatever, but Rachel works for the NRO, so she is inside on a lot of government secrets that other characters are not (which saves their lives a couple times). The director of this agency is William Pickering, a small and unassuming man with an extraordinary amount of power. We have no idea how much power until the end. As Rachel is having an uncomfortable meeting with her father at a restaurant, she receives a text to see the director immediately. There she finds that the President wishes to meet with her, and without explanation, is zipped off to Wallops Island in a PaveHawk chopper, where she joins the President aboard Air Force One. Brown gives a lengthy description of the interior of this luxurious plane. Our tax dollars at work.
    Here, President Herney gives Rachel a rather ambiguous explanation of why he has summoned her. NASA has made a discovery that will turn around the souring public opinion of them as a tax-wasting agency with little to show but failure for many years. Rachel senses that Herney is also using her support to get back at his opponent. And so she is soon on her way, and finds out in horror that her destination is the Arctic Circle. Rachel is not fond of water, especially of the icy type, as she had almost drowned in a skating accident when she was seven. This might not be a good day.
    Upon her arrival she is brought to the habisphere, where the NASA administrator, Lawrence Ekstrom begins the explanation of the discovery. A meteorite has been found beneath the ice, and is in the process up being hoisted to the surface inside the habisphere. To make the discovery more authentic and believable to the public, President Herney has also sent four civilian experts to assist in the discovery: the handsome Michael Tolland, star of the popular TV series, Amazing Seas; the jocular Corky Marlinson, National Medal of Science recipient in astrophysics, a name very familiar to Rachel in her work at the NRO; Dr. Wailee Ming, chairman of paleontology at UCLA; and Dr. Norah Mangor, a top glaciologist from UNH. It seems all the excitement here is appropriate: fossils have been found inside the meteorite. Bugs—great big ones—from outer space.
    But something is wrong, and it is Dr. Ming who discovers it. However, he doesn't live long enough to tell about is. As the others discover in terror, someone doesn't want them to know the truth. Rachel has an idea who the assassins are, and knows they usually hit their target. And so begins the fight and flight for their lives.
    Meanwhile, enter Marjorie Tench (rhymes with stench), one of those characters that seems to have jumped out of a Dickens novel:

Marjorie Tench—senior advisor to the President—was a loping skeleton of a creature. Her gaunt six-foot frame resembled an Erector Set of joints and limbs. Overhanging her precarious body was a jaundiced face whose skin resembled a sheet of parchment paper punctured by two emotionless eyes. At fifty-one, she looked seventy.

This is one hideously ugly woman, and with a cigarette usually hanging from her mouth was "revered in Washington as a goddess in the political arena," who "possessed analytical skills that bordered on the clairvoyant." Needless to say, she was a valuable asset to President Herney. And while he vowed to keep his campaign clean and positive, she did not, and it seems she has magically come into possession of some photos of the sexual encounter between Gabrielle and Senator Sexton. Tench requests her presence. In this meeting, she attempts to educate Gabrielle on the, not only unethical, but illegal behavior of her candidate. Gabrielle at first is appalled, and tosses it off as slander, but in the back of her mind, the information shared with her by Tench rings a bell of truth and begins the erosion of her support of Sexton. The rest she discovers on her own.
And that's all I' tell you because there's so many surprises in this one and I don't want to spoil the fun. But I will say this: If you only read one of Dan Brown's books, make it this one. (But you should read the others, too.) It will keep you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end.

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