Angels & Demons, by Dan Brown

I may be one of the few, but I read “Angels & Demons,” before “The Da Vinci Code.” Most people read Dan Brown’s mega hit first and then discovered his other novels. I, however, love thrillers and am always looking through the book stores for fun reads. I was riveted to “Angels & Demons,” I loved it. I, again probably one of the few, didn’t like the story of “The Da Vinci Code,” as much as its predecessor. However, “The Da Vinci Code,” story is tighter and easier to follow, there’s a lot going on in “Angels.” Brown honed his craft on “Angels,” but I really enjoyed the story.

The author loves his secret societies, and guess what – so do the rest of us. Intrigue, suspicion, mayhem, conspiracies, and wickedness mixed together, then sprinkled with a little historical fact make for a powerful commercial success. “Angels & Demons,” brought me to places I had not been before – the catacombs of the Vatican. As a matter of fact, the novel brings you all around the Vatican and its beautiful surroundings.

Robert Langdon is introduced in this novel. A professor of iconology at Harvard University, he is awakened from a dream by a call from a CERN scientist. [When I was reading this novel, I didn’t realize that CERN was a real corporation. I looked up CERN when another author, Douglas Preston, introduced another big bang machine in his novel, “Blasphemy.” Okay, so I detoured a little.] Langdon dismisses the call as a mistake. Later, a fax with a picture of a corpse and the word “Illuminati,” burned into the corpse’s flesh did catch the professor’s attention. And so begins this cat and mouse game through Europe and into the very depths of the Vatican’s inner circle.

Brown took a historical secret society, Illuminati, and added on an imaginative conspiracy. The Illuminati, in actuality, was an outgrowth of the Enlightenment founded by Adam Weishaupt in 1776 in Bavaria. Weishaupt rejected his Jesuit training and his mission was to establish a new world order abolishing monarchical governments and religion. The Illuminati existed for only around 10 years before an edict from the Bavarian government outlawed all secret societies. There is still plenty of intrigue surrounding most of the secret societies. Fascinated by covert agencies, Michael Bradley wrote a book entitled, “The Secret Societies Handbook.” Bradley believes the Illuminati the most powerful society of them all, and still very active today. People love conspiracy theories.

Two other good topics to play off each other are religion and science, and Brown uses that to his advantage in this story. Brown is also well versed in art history and religious symbology, as well as his knowledge of secret societies. So he bends the rules a little (maybe a lot – according to an art history professor I had at Rutgers). In the end, however, “Angels & Demons,” is a work of fiction that stretches the limits, but keeps you turning the pages.

This might be a good pick for book club because of the religion and science aspects, such as the big bang theory and Genius – can they coexist. It is also enjoyable once in a while to read a good suspenseful thriller – just for fun.

Looking forward to the movie.

Rating: 7.8-8