INFERNO

Dan Brown should be named the comeback writer of the year after his mediocre novel, The Lost Symbol, crashed and burned in 2009. Though I enjoyed this novel, it did cross my mind that this Robert Langdon character should be put out to pasture. I’m growing weary and bored with this nonaggressive Indiana Jones look alike. It’s business as usual deciphering symbols with a pretty lady as his companion du jour. It’s one art history lesson after another and descriptive writing about famous cities and their churches. Okay, I get it. Again, I liked this book, but please…will somebody make him disappear so that Dan Brown can write another novel like Deception Point. The author is very talented but needs to move on. Even Clive Cussler moved away from Dirk Pitt long enough for the reader to catch their literary breath. Inferno is the type of novel that causes the reader to guesstimate when the next twist will occur, and the surprises will be especially frequent in the last hundred plus pages.

As the novel opens, we find our Harvard professor lying in a hospital bed in Florence, Italy with a gunshot wound to the head. He has no idea how he got there or why he is there. Welcome to the world of amnesia. Whoever tried to kill him is back and opens gunfire in his room. One doctor is shot, the other doctor, Sienna Brooks, escapes with our Mr. Langdon. As they arrive at the doctor’s apartment, it seems like the whole world is chasing him. Why? He keeps having these visions of Dante Alighieri’s hell (from Inferno, the first part of The Divine Comedy). There is a silver haired veiled woman by a river of blood shouting at him, “seek and ye shall find.“ He finds a tube in his jacket with the code saligia on it. Langdon knows that it’s a Latin mnemonic for the Seven Deadly Sins. It turns out to be a Faraday pointer, and Langdon shakes the tube and projects an image of Botticelli’s painting of the Map of Hell. He discovers more clues, but before he can study the new clues, an aggregate of police and agents dressed in black arrive. Langdon and Sienna are on the run again.

Meanwhile, the reader learns that eminent scientist, Bertrand Zobrist, has hired the nefarious group known as the Consortium to hide his identity and location from Elizabeth Sinskey, head of the World Health Organization (WHO). Zobrist had sought Sinskey’s support for his depopulation plan. Zobrist feels the the world’s population must be thinned-out in order for it to avoid extinction. Obviously, the head of WHO doesn’t agree. The clues left by Zobrist indicate that he is getting ready to unleash a new plague on mankind. Zobrist has left a film in the hands of the “Provost” of the Consortium to be released to the world the next day. In the film, there is a plaque in the water that says, “In this place, on this date, the world was changed forever.” What has he done? Can Langdon decipher all the clues in time to find the hiding place of the virus? And who are all these groups chasing Langdon and Sienna? Are they friend, or foe?

I must stop before I give away the last three hundred pages. Our symbologist and art historian, Robert Langdon, faces mental puzzles comparable to the ones in Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code. This is an exciting novel, but I hope it’s the last for awhile. I want Dan Brown to write a number one bestseller without Robert Langdon. He can do it. Now, I do highly recommend this novel, but issue the following warning: This novel could be as contagious as Dr. Zobrist’s virus. By the way, I didn’t tell you what his plague is supposed to do. Oh well, another reason to buy your own copy.

 RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: I was intrigued by Botticelli’s famous painting of the Map of Hell:

Botticelli’s map of the Inferno

Botticelli’s ‘Abyss of Hell’ – a map of Dante’s inferno

                                       

One of a series of illustrations for the Divine Comedy produced by Botticelli.

Pen and brush on vellum (32 × 47 cm) — c. 1485

Dante Alighieri died 692 years ago and is still a literary legend. Sandro Botticelli painted Dante’s nine layered vision of hell about 164 years after Dante’s death. It’s hard to imagine that these two artist would be so influential after all these years. Talk about leaving your mark on earth. Also interesting is how they made a death mask of individuals - no photos in those days. Ha! Ha! On page 169, Langdon explains to Sienna at the Palazzo Vecchio (where Dante’s death mask is housed) how a death mask was made: “Shortly after death the deceased is laid out, and his face is coated with olive oil. Then a layer of wet plaster is caked onto the skin, covering everything-mouth, nose, eyelids-from the hairline down to the neck. Once hardened, the plaster is easily lifted off and used as a mold into which fresh plaster is poured. This plaster hardens into a perfectly detailed replica of the deceased’s face.”

Photo courtesy of www.mediasense.com/florence/dante.htm.

Death mask of Dante Alighieri

Death mask were normally made for the rich and famous. Some noteworthy death masks include: Ludwig Van Beethoven, Alfred Hitchcock, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Paine, Woodrow Wilson, Oliver Cromwell, Richard Wagner, and inventor, Nicola Tesla. Wow! What a cast of characters.