Another great one by Dan Brown, but ranks 3rd of the three I’ve read so far. This one is a thriller based around the Cryptology department of the NSA. One of the agency’s former employees has created an unbreakable encryption algorithm and threatens to release it to the world if the NSA does not let the country know about their super code breaking computer. As you might guess, things take a turn for the worse.

The character development is very well done, just like Brown’s other books, but it wasn’t as interesting. Some of the computer stuff was obviously interesting to me, but the plot didn’t feel right at times. He spent way too much time going back to the relationship between two of the main characters in the book. Most of it could have been left out.

After reading this 3rd book by Brown I’ve realized a few things:

• They all take place in a 24-48 hour period.
• Short chapters are the way to tell a good story.
• Brown uses 3-4 different parts of the story all at once, but in seperate chapters. This keeps you reading. For instance, you are reading about part 1 and when you finish the chapter, you have to read a few more chapters before getting back to part 1. while you are reading these other chapters, the same thing happens. You never want to put the book down!
• I love reading about code breaking in his books.

I give Digital Fortress a B+.