Inferno

June 10, 2013
The threat of world overpopulation is the latest assignment for Brown's art historian and accidental sleuth Robert Langdon. Awakening in a Florence hospital with no memory of the preceding 36 hours, Langdon and an attractive attending physician with an oversized intellect are immediately pursued by an ominous underground organization and the Italian police. Detailed tours of Florence, Venice, and Istanbul mean to establish setting, but instead bog down the story and border on showoffmanship. Relying on a deceased villain's trail of clues threaded through the text of Dante's The Divine Comedy, the duo attempt to unravel the events leading up to Langdon's amnesia and thwart a global genocide scheme. Suspension of disbelief is required as miraculous coincidences pile upon pure luck. Near the three-quarters point everything established gets upended and Brown, hoping to draw us in deeper, nearly drives us out. Though the prose is fast-paced and sharp, the burdensome dialogue only serves plot and back story, and is interspersed with unfortunate attempts at folksy humor. It's hard not to appreciate a present day mega-selling thriller that attempts a refresher course in Italian literature and European history. But the real mystery is in the book's denouement and how Brown can possibly bring his hero back for more. Agent: Heide Lange, Sanford J. Greenberger Associates.

July 29, 2013
Harvard Professor Robert Langdon returns for another globetrotting adventure in Brown’s latest. Awakening in an Italian hospital room, Langdon is suffering from short-term amnesia. He has no idea what’s happened to him during the past few days or why he’s in Italy. Before he can begin to pull his thoughts together, an assassin breaks into the hospital and attempts to kill him, sending the academic, along with a beautiful nurse, fleeing into the streets of Florence and straight into a mind-bending mystery, the key to which is buried in Dante’s masterwork, the Divine Comedy. As Langdon travels around the world, navigating his way through a labyrinth of clues, it becomes clear that he is in a race against time to stop an evil mastermind’s devilish plot that threatens the future of all humankind. Paul Michael’s narration is clear and precise; his pronunciation of each word, including large passages in Italian, is impeccable. He skillfully keeps the story moving at a strong, steady pace and balances a large cast of international characterizations with ease. He also manages to deliver Brown’s signature mountain of historical material without slowing the story to a crawl and offers an accomplished reading sure to satisfy any listener. A Doubleday hardcover.