Penzler Pick, December 2001: In the world of page-turning thrillers, Dan Brown holds a special place in the hearts of many of us. After his first book, Digital Fortress, almost passed me by, he wrote Angels and Demons, which was probably one of the half-dozen most exciting thrillers of last year. It is a pleasure to report that his new book lives up to his reputation as a writer whose research and talent make his stories exciting, believable, and just plain unputdownable.

The time is now and President Zachary Herney is facing a very tough reelection. His opponent, Senator Sedgwick Sexton, is a powerful man with powerful friends and a mission: to reduce NASA's spending and move space exploration into the private sector. He has numerous supporters, including many beyond the businesses who will profit from this because of the embarrassment of 1996, when the Clinton administration was informed by NASA that proof existed of life on other planets. That information turned out to be premature, if not incorrect. (This story is true; I repeat, Dan Brown's research is very, very good.) The embattled president is assured that a rare object buried deep in the Arctic ice will prove to have far-reaching implications on America's space program. The find, however, needs to be verified.

Enter Rachel Sexton, a gister for the National Reconnaissance Office. Gisters reduce complex reports into single-page briefs, and in this case the president needs that confirmation before he broadcasts to the nation, probably ensuring his reelection. It's tricky because Rachel is the daughter of his opponent. Rachel is thrilled to be on the team traveling to the Arctic circle. She is a realist about her father's politics and has little respect for his stand on NASA, but Senator Sexton cannot help but have a problem with her involvement.

Adventure, romance, murder, skullduggery, and nail-biting tension ensue. By the end of Deception Point, the reader will be much better informed about how our space program works and how our politicians react to new information. Bring on the next Dan Brown thriller! --Otto Penzler

When a new NASA satellite spots evidence of an astonishingly rare object buried deep in the Arctic ice, the floundering space agency proclaims a much-needed victory...a victory that has profound implications for U.S. space policy and the impending presidential election. With the Oval Office in the balance, the President dispatches White House Intelligence analyst Rachel Sexton to the Milne Ice Shelf to verify the authenticity of the find. Accompanied by a team of experts, including the charismatic academic Michael Tolland, Rachel uncovers the unthinkable: evidence of scientific trickery -- a bold deception that threatens to plunge the world into controversy.

But before Rachel can contact the President, she and Michael are attacked by a deadly team of assassins controlled by a mysterious power broker who will stop at nothing to hide the truth. Fleeing for their lives in an environment as desolate as it is lethal, their only hope for survival is to find out who is behind this masterful ploy. The truth, they will learn, is the most shocking deception of all.

In his most thrilling novel to date, bestselling author Dan Brown transports readers from the ultrasecret National Reconnaissance Office to the towering ice shelves of the Arctic Circle, and back again to the hallways of power inside the West Wing. Heralded for masterfully intermingling science, history, and politics in his critically acclaimed thriller Angels & Demons, Brown has crafted another novel in which nothing is as it seems -- and behind every corner is a stunning surprise. Deception Point is pulse-pounding fiction at its best.

I gave this as a gift to my son in the military because he likes Dan Brown's writing and stories.

Dan Brown has some wonderful books. This is not one of them. I picked this up, due to my interest in U.S. government agencies (three letter ones), and the space program. I should have put the book back down instead of buying it.

While I don't begrudge Mr. Brown his conspiracies, I would recommend do some better research on *what* the agencies actually do, than assume. I'm sure, after I write this, the NRO will send their "hit-squad" after me. Or not.

The two main characters were decently written, action was enough to keep me reading, and the premise (while flawed) had some taste of "within the realm of cocaine-addled possibility... but using a Three Letter Agency (TLA) as the harbingers of death because a satellite program was jacked up... What?!? The U.S. govt has lost *billions* of dollars to satellite programs that don't work, break down immediately after launch or blow up on the launch pad. You don't see people dying en masse because of THOSE screw ups.

I'm a TLA purist - I do studies on the Intelligence Community and their agencies... I could even believe that the CIA has kidnapped Roswell aliens in their Langley facility... but to think the NRO (made up of lazy Air Force bluesuiters and pencil-pushing CIA geeks) could conjure up a convincing conspiracy TOGETHER... now that's definitely fiction. Save your dollars for the Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons, or a coloring book. Put "Deception Point" back on the shelf.

This is probably not the first Dan Brown novel you would pick to read since The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons are the more famous work, therefore it is hard not to compare Deception Point with Brown's other novels. Deception Point gives the same Dan Brown's thriller factor, but it lacks in believability and relies too much on perfect coincidences.

The plot was very predictable (the title is a very big hint) and the characters are very one-dimensional. You would expect the characters to be very enlightened after the outrageous things they went through in the book, but they were left unchanged. Also, the final revelation didn't have a big impact on the story (unlike Brown's other novels). The climax was very unconvincing (SPOILER: I don't see how three professional assassins failed again and again to kill the three protagonists)... I guess readers have to really use their imagination and go along with Brown's plot to fully enjoy the absurdness towards the end.

This is not a bad political-thriller by all means, but too much events in this novel are coincidental and unconvincing. I did enjoy the separate plots connecting together in the end, but the shallow characters were too predictable and boring to read.

Dan Brown doesn't mess around with science; he uses rock hard facts that will blow your mind. As is his style, Brown delivers plenty of intense action, crafty characters, almost ludicrous dilemmas, and twists that leave you spinning. Read it! -Stephen Prins, author of: Strife of the Lorin

It's an ok beach book. Nothing more.
But I agree with many of the criticisms I've read from other reviewers. First, the cardboard characters. Way too politically correct (Villain: white male Republican. Heroine: young, pretty intelligence analyst who outsmarts the male scientists and outfights special forces soldiers. ALternate heroine: young, pretty, black political wonk who outsmarts her aforementioned white male politician boss, and everybody else. With the aid of her female news reporter friend. You go, girls!).
Second, Brown alleges that all the technology in the book is real. I'm skeptical about the flying microbot -- at least with the degree of control to fly it into the eye of a person who is moving his head around. Also the rifle that manufactures bullets from snow or sand packed into its handle. Real -- or just on the drawing board? But I outright challenge the idea that there's an F-14 version that can fly 6,000 miles without refueling -- some of that distance on afterburner. And if Brown is not being entirely honest when he says all this is real -- I wonder what it tells me about his assurances that his most famous work also contains true accounts of historical events and organizations?