So, Dan Brown is the Tom Clancy of this millenium, it seems. Everybody needs to read his books, they’re highly recommended by a broad range of people – from the relatively gullible easy-fare thrill-seeker to folks who loved intelligent thrillers, like the Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.
Yes, it’s hard to get around Dan Brown these days. As soon as I log into Amazon, he’s all over the place, in my personalized book recommendations, in the reviews, in the “blockbusters for less money” insert … everywhere.
Everybody has read the Da Vinci Code, and loved it, judging from the comments. So I ordered it, and read it, and frankly, I was impressed.
It’s a good, intelligent plot, and yes, it’s riveting like hell. Moreover, he always introduces yet one more twist in the tale, characters above any suspicion suddenly look like prime suspects, and the guys where you thought they’re guilty as hell suddenly prove their innocence. And then, 20 pages on, it all reverses.
This method of “confusing the audience” reminded me quite a bit of Robert Shea’s Illuminatus! trilogy. Surprisingly, there even is a book by Dan Brown called Angels & Demons, which to some extent is about the same secret society. So, I took the bait and ordered the “special deal” at Amazon, Illuminati and Digital Fortress, Dan Brown’s first work for a ridiculously low price (something like 8 € both together, I think).
Illuminati, to me, was a disappointment, but that may be my fault. It’s kind of well written, it is definitely a thriller, but I think reading it a few months after the Da Vinci Code spoiled it for me. While the story is different, some elements seem awfully familiar, not only the main character (who indeed is the same person in both books). Still, it’s a good book for a long train ride.
But my ultimate mistake was to read Digital Fortress, Dan Brown’s first book, right after Angels & Demons. Now, this you shouldn’t do. Never. Don’t read it, if you’re into cryptography (which it purportedly is about). Read something else, like Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon (which I can highly recommend).
Digital Fortress shows us all the plot techniques that Dan Brown uses, but in an unrefined way (granted – it’s his first book, give him a break). But having read the other books, the way he weaves his plot becomes quite predictable (but still, I won’t include spoilers). About 30-40 pages in, as the main theme is exposed, I immediately knew who the bad guy would be, and hell, I was right. Not in all details, such as his motivations, but still, the plot was clear. What a disappointment!
Moreover, it’s a book about the NSA and about cryptography. I am not a cryptography expert, but maybe a little bit a crypto buff. I read and (mostly) understood Applied Cryptography, and a couple of other books on the history and current trends in cryptography (such as the excellent book by Simon Singh).
In the preface, Dan Brown thanks two anonymous employees of the NSA for sharing with him information about modern cryptography. I think he was fooled by some anonymous wannabees, or the NSA successfully kept crypto “secrets” from him. Everything that is about crypto in this book is exceedingly unbelievable and uninformed.
Examples abound: One of the main characters is a beautiful female NSA codebreaker, and thus major parts of the book deal with the way that NSA decrypts email. According to the book, they possess a humongous computer for this, a veritable shrine to technology, so big that they built the crypto building around it. This machine contains 3 million CPUs and thus is capable of brute-forcing encrypted emails within 2 minutes per email. This – according to the book – enables them to read any encrypted electronic conversation. In reality, it enables them to read only a selected portion, since 2 minutes is a long time, considering how many encrypted emails they would collect globally in a day. This fundamental error is repeated several times in the book.
In another place in the book, a new encryption algorithm is discussed, “Digital Fortress”, which kind-of holds NSA hostage. They possess the algorithm source code, but unfortunately, it is heavily encoded, with a 64 bit key, equalling 64 characters. Close, but no cigar. And while we cannot measure cryptosystem strength purely by key length, 64 doesn’t sound so impressive. At least the author could have chosen something that sounds cooler.
The errors go on and on, email messages which when decrypted are suddenly executed as code on the code-breaking computer violates the distinction between data and code … or maybe the NSA’s computer runs Outlook?
If you write about crypto, collaborate with an expert (like Neal Stephenson, who collaborated with Bruce Schneier for the trickier parts of Cryptonomicon). Or at least, read a few public articles, before you make a fool of yourself. Digital Fortress left me angry at actually finishing the book.
