Deception Point

I read Deception Point, a 736 page book by Dan Brown. As the title implies there were a lot of deceptions in this book. This novel is about Rachel Sexton, the daughter of a senator running for the presidency. She and her father don't get along well because her father is power hungry and mean and cheated on Rachel's mother. Rachel is a gister, she works for a secret agency known as the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). Rachel takes information from the intelligence reports from the NRO and then condenses the important information and sends it in a brief report to the presidents' office. One day she received a call from the president that he wanted to meet her. So, she met the president and he told her that NASA had made a huge discovery. NASA was under attack from Senator Sexton, Rachel's father, for spending tons of money that got wasted and that money going to NASA was money that could be spent on helping schools. Anyway after a lot of suspense of what the discovery was, because the President said that he couldn't tell her what the discovery was, she would have to see it for herself. So, she is flown to the Arctic and she finds that NASA had discovered a meteorite with fossil on it, which proved that there was extraterrestrial life. She did what the president had asked her to and via a video camera on the computer, informed the president's staff about the discovery. However, after a while the authenticity of the meteorite was put into question and so Rachel and Michael and Corky and Norah went outside on the Arctic to do this test and they found that the meteorite had been planted in the ice. However, they were attacked and Norah died. Corky, Michael, and Rachel through many very dangerous situations that they just happened to survive, while been followed by the secret service people that attacked them, managed to get on an ice shelf. They thought that they were going to die but Rachel had been hitting their piece of ice which sent out signals, that a submarine that just happened to be near by heard. The submarine rescued them and then they were going to be taken by helicopter to meet the head of the NRO to talk about the meteorite. In brief, after a long series of debates Rachel and Michael now believe that the meteorite was a fake, though Corky still believes that the meteorite is real. However, they go to Michael's ship were he has all his information for his research on the ocean. There they find the final piece of evidence that the meteorite is a fake. They get attacked again and more people die and they find out that the mastermind behind the whole operation is William Pickering, the head of the NRO. A huge thing called a megaplume was hit by a sinking helicopter and the megaplume exploded and it sunk the ship with Pickering on it, however there just happened to be another helicopter there that was looking for the previous helicopter that had taken everyone to the ship. This new helicopter saved Corky, Michael, and Rachel and they went to the President and told him everything. In the end the President wins the election over Senator Sexton because Sexton was going to show the press evidence of NASA's scam, however Rachel and Sexton's assistant Gabrielle had switched the photos so that instead they showed the photos of Sexton's sex scandal. In the end Michael and Rachel fall in love. Throughout all of this the point of view is constantly switching and telling the stories from different perspectives. Another side of the story is from Gabrielle who at first believed in Sexton but then found out his true nature and so Gabrielle turned on him.

I think that a lot of Dan Brown's books are similar, but I still think that they are fun to read. I think that Dan Brown does like suspense a little too much. In the book Rachel, Michael, Corky, and Norah think that there is something wrong because there were plankton in the meteorite excavation hole. However, it takes so long before the reader finds that out. First some scientists sees something in the water that really excites him, but the secret service people knew that it was bad that he found whatever was in the water and so they kill him. Then a few chapters later everyone else finds the hole and are shocked by what is in it and can't believe it and then finally the reader learns that it is plankton that are in the hole. Dan Brown seems to really like making things suspenseful and mysterious and I sometimes think that it is a little too much and it sounds kind of forced, like it is obviously supposed to be drawing as much suspense as it can. I also think that in this book there were a few too many life or death scenes were miraculously something saves the main characters.