Digital Fortress 217
| Digital Fortress: A Thriller | |
| author | Dan Brown |
| pages | 384 |
| publisher | Griffin Trade Paperback |
| rating | 7 out of 10 |
| reviewer | Carl Anderson |
| ISBN | 0312263120 |
| summary | An excellent, if slightly flawed, exploration into the world of government cryptography and those who try to defeat it |
The premise
The first page ("Prologue") is enough to draw you right in. A Japanese man in Seville, Spain, is dying, and in his last act he attempts to communicate with fellow tourists. We immediately wonder, What is he trying to say? How does this relate to the premise of the book?
Flipping the page literally flips across the Atlantic Ocean, to the National Security Agency (NSA) and to beautiful, intelligent Susan Fletcher, head cryptographer at the NSA. She is involved with a university language professor named David Becker--a man who will figure deeply into the story.
A mysterious phone call sends David to Spain and a phone call from Susan's boss, Commander Strathmore, brings her to NSA headquarters. It's there that she learns of a potentially fatal threat to the NSA's codebreaking supercomputer, TRANSLTR--an unbreakable encryption. Strathmore briefs her that a disgruntled former employee, Ensei Tankado, has threatened to release this encryption scheme to the highest bidder. If Tankado does so, the NSA will be crippled--a fact proven by the revelation that TRANSLTR normally spends minutes decoding a message, but has spent more than half a day trying to break Tankado's algorithm.
Tankado isn't stupid--Strathmore says he has an accomplice who will release the code in the event that something happens to Tankado. Unfortunately, Tankado is the Japanese man who has died in Seville...and thus the NSA is running out of time to locate Tankado's pass key to break the encryption before his accomplice can release it to the world.
Meanwhile, Becker is still in Spain, under orders--from Strathmore, it turns out--to do just that. He realizes that Tankado's ring is the "key" to the mystery, and thus he begins a frantic search that leads him from a French-Canadian writer in the clinic, to a fat German tourist and his red-haired "escort," to a punk rock bar on the outskirts of town. Did I mention he's being followed by a deaf assassin the whole time?
What I likedAs I mentioned, Digital Fortress has all the elements that I was looking for. It had just the right amount of main characters, and everyone had a proper place in the book and in the story. I'm appreciative of the tidbits of technical information here and there--mentions of PGP, NSA history, and other such morsels were well placed.
There was also a smattering of sexual energy (although no real "sex scenes") and humor here and there. Who said computer geeks can't have a good time?!
I'm also a fan of subplots in books, that magically mesh together near the climax. Dan Brown deserves praise in this regard: minor characters who initially make you question their presence are brought nicely into the fold and given purpose.
In any book like this, little puzzles and questions come up as a matter of course. The reader is challenged to solve them just as the characters are. In this book, there are many such puzzles: What does the inscription on the ring mean? Who is Tankado working with, and how? What is the pass-code for the encryption scheme? Why is David Becker being hunted down? I delighted in trying to come up with answers to these questions as I read the book, and was pleasantly surprised to see I was wrong in many respects.
What I didn't likeIn any mystery or thriller, the idea is to keep the reader guessing as long as possible, through plot twists, diverging plot lines that reconnect later, and the like. Brown does a fairly good job here, but this is where the book has its weakest points. For example, it is revealed early on that Tankado and the dead Japanese man in Spain are the same person. While this is perhaps unavoidable to push the plot along, I found it strange to have this happen so quickly. Later in the book, the author flips back and forth between who could be Tankado's accomplice, and who has committed a murder in Crypto. This flip-flopping is done poorly and leaves the reader thinking, "I already have my mind made up and you're not doing very well dangling red herrings." I had the bad guy pegged a couple of chapters before it was revealed, although I will admit that I was surprised at a particular turn of events afterwards.
Although this book was published in the late '90s, the technology aspects are still relevant--but this book gets some technical facts incorrect, or at least a bit off. However, they're fairly minor and don't detract from the book too much.
Some plot points are just too far fetched to be believable. For example, Susan's fiance, David Becker, tries to outrun a taxi--driven by the deaf assassin--while on a motorbike. The professional assassin fires several shots at Becker and misses every time, even though the bike is significantly slower than the taxi and the shots hit the bike body itself on several occasions.
Finally, some of the people in the NSA seem too stupid to be working there. In an effort to not give away spoilers, I can't be too much more specific than that, but suffice it to say that the "solution" is something that a high school science student wouldn't have much trouble figuring out.
Final thoughtsI tore into this book with high expectations. I finished the book with mixed feelings. As I look back on it, I can't help but feel that there was a lot of untapped potential and some glaring mistakes that could have been avoided. But I'm also pleased to have read what I consider a fairly good book, one that has served to heighten my interest in the genre, and made me even more ready to read The DaVinci Code.
Of course, it wouldn't be fair to compare this book to any of Dan Brown's later works. An author matures as he or she writes more books, and thus I'm certain that many of my quibbles would have been ironed out in future books. I'll have to find that out when I read DaVinci.
While it might seem that I had more bad to say about the book than good, I'd say that the reverse is actually true--the "good" goes all through the book, but there isn't really a way to quantify it.
I'd wholeheartedly recommend this novel to anyone who has an interest in technological thrillers, spy novels, or thrillers in general. It's a very accessible and enjoyable read, and I'm glad I bought it.
You can purchase Digital Fortress from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
A beautiful female crytpographer? (Score:5, Funny)
Dear author (Score:5, Funny)
It was exactly what I was looking for
No it wasn't. You were looking for The DaVinci Code. Remember now?
Helpin' out,
Letter
And that encryption scheme was: (Score:3, Funny)
Flipping the page... (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds just like the DaVinci code (Score:3, Funny)
da vinci code, angels & demons, plus minor spo (Score:3, Funny)
However, I do recommend both of these books, just maybe in chronological order.
minor spoiler, no names or real details given...
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Re:binary (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Amazing. (Score:3, Funny)
The plot thickens (Score:5, Funny)
NSA Chief: Aha! The ring is mine! Now our supercomputer with the clever acronym can decode this vitally important document! (hands document to flunky) What does it say?
NSA Underling: (Turns ring and presses buttons on blinkenlights panel.) It says..."Be sure to drink your Ovaltine."
NSA Chief: Ovaltine? A crummy commercial? Son-of-a-bitch! Here, try it again! (hands new document to flunky.)
NSA Underling: (repeats procedure) It says..."All your base-"
NSA Chief: (pulls gun from holster and shoots his underling.)
NSA Underling: AIEEEEEE! (Underling expires.)
NSA Chief: (Shakes fist to heavens.) Curse you, fat German tourist and his red-haired "escort"!!! Cuuurrrse yoooouuu!!!!
Brown's cryptographic sophistication ... (Score:2, Funny)
Really, given Brown's infatuation with silliness in DaVinci and the way he misses the boat in this one (unbreakable encryption? Just use a 4096-bit key; it'll take Moore's Law at least a couple years to catch up...), I have to wonder if the reason he doesn't do steamy sex scenes is because the technology is too advanced for him...
Craig
My review... (Score:5, Funny)
I was able to suspend my disbelief at an "unbreakable code" not bothering any of the cryptologists. And I was able to swallow, for the sake of the plot, some external person able to write a file of encrypted text that would (somehow) infect the code-breaking machine with a virus.
I was was even able to overlook the author's mistaken description of what "public key" asymmetric cryptography was. (He obviously missed the whole point of it when he failed to mention that it's useful because you don't have to have a secret channel to transmit your key to the other party!)
However, when they talked of using "Streaming Quicktime" to send video messages across the world, that's when I could no longer suspend my disbelief. Nobody in the world would use "Streaming Quicktime" for a remote video feed.
Re:The author's confused (Score:3, Funny)
You must be mistaken. Brown even offers thanks to two ex-NSA cryptographers who helped him via anonymous remailers. So this book MUST be accurate.
Based on the results, I suspect Brown's anonymous benefactors were actually a couple of 9-year-olds who thought it would be funny to fuck with him.
I read this stinker on a 3 hour flight (Score:3, Funny)
In any case, wooohee! Was it ever a stinker. First of all, being a geek, I recognized when he got the cryptography wrong, which was practically on every page. He got this stuff so wrong that it was literally (I mean literally literally not figuratively literally) laugh out loud bad. OK maybe snicker out loud bad, but bad. Did I mention how not good the information in this book was? Neal Stephenson this guy ain't.
The novel itself is your basic thriller, which means the plot has more twists than a toddler's slinky. It reminded me of a stock episode of Mission Impossible. Come to think of it the author does seem to owe quite a bit to old TV shows. He apparently learned the technique for increasing dramatic tension by watching old Star Trek episodes where the crew manages to abort the self-desruct sequence
The writing faults are, I suppose, largely first-book kind of missteps. But really if you are going to write a techno thriller, you need to do better research. Robin Cook, Michael Crichton and Neal Stephenson seem to manage. From the dedication, I take it that Mr. Brown's education in crypto issues was from a couple of "ex-NSA cryptographers", whose identity he does not know and whom he never met, but corresponded with through anonymous remailers. Riiight. Maybe his next work will be about Nigerians smuggling money out of the country with the help of people they met through e-mail.
I suppose naivete is forgivable, but what's worse is that the author, after "informing" his readers on the technical aspects of cryptography, goes on to give an equally trenchant explanation of the politics of crypto
That said, there are few places where the author demonstrates, despite being a lazy ignoramous, that he may actually have some writing talent. His description of the NSA's super-secret code breaking machine (I mean the physical, not the technical description) is memorable in the way that good authors, by an act like telepathy, put an image in your head. He compares the appearance of the machine to a killer whale rising out of the floor, but the image is, of course, appropriately phallic. So perhaps this guy's later books are better.
There's certainly room for improvement.