The Lost Symbol

The Lost Symbol, like its predecessor, The DaVinci Code, has the same technique of hinged chapters that lead you one chapter to the next with irresistible speed, making the book a compulsive page turner. The reader swings through these series of 133 chapters like Tarzan swinging across the jungle one vine to the next to another in a quick and harmonic order. Robert Langdon is there again, playing the lead role at the center of action and the main resource of knowledge about symbols, puzzles, and “Ancient Mysteries,” as well as being an action figure and a victim. Playing against him is a villain named Mal’akh, a figure of superhero stature and strength, a man covered in tattoos that symbolize his past and future that he covers up with makeup when he has to deal with the normal world. He also wears a blond wig with a tiny camera hidden inside, which gives us the only real peek at a Freemasonry ceremony, which are assiduously kept secret by Masons. The twist at the end of the book is Mal’akh’s real identity, which surprised the hell out of me.
If somebody reading this doesn’t want to know what revelations are made at the end of the day, stop reading now. Earlier in the story we had learned that Zack Solomon had lost his life in a Turkish prison, being killed by Mal’akh who was also prison there. It was an unnecessary death because his father, Peter Solomon, a major figure among Washington DC Masons and long time friend of Robert Langdon, had decided to leave Zach in prison “to teach him a lesson” rather than buy his way out, which he could have done. Mal’akh turns out to be Zach, demented and remade along lines dictated by black magic, so the motive that drives the story is at bottom revenge, which begins with the discovery of his father’s cut off right hand. We aren’t sure what Zach’s plan is aiming at but he does keep saying we must learn how to die wisely. In a bizarre twist we learn he doesn’t want to kill his father, instead he wants Peter to kill him, ritually with an ancient knife used for such killings in the distant past, imagining it as some kind of daemonic apotheosis, an afterlife coronation. What he hoped for, this crazy ascension to daemonic glory, is a token how demented he had become in that Turkish prison and by his hunger for revenge. Not surprisingly, Peter could not sacrifice his son a second time, so he brought the knife down on the altar not into the body like he was suppose to and instead Mal’akh/Zack dies a horrible death as shards of glass from a skylight rain down on him, providing him with an agonizing death, depriving him of his carefully designed elevation to black arts sainthood. I had a curious reaction to finding out the villain was really Zach; It changed the thriller aspect of the story, that is, rather than a determined attack by a Darth Vader type anti-hero trying to bring down the central belief of western civilization, the whole thing was based on an interfamily feud and an exotic revenge plot. He wanted to destroy his father’s moral and ethical center, which in his mind was better—more satisfying-- than killing him outright.
The 12 hours of the story involve, of course, a long chase and several other characters; and reading of all the interactions and twists and turns of the plot make for an entertaining read. This book is more into outright fantasy than his previous two books which were spun around the Vatican and religious notions that have some credence, like Mary Magdalene and Jesus being a married couple and having an heir. Mal’akh is a more far-fetched villain, almost comic book-like in character and appearance. But Langdon remains the same, more or less solidly in the real world. At times you need to have some willing suspension of disbelief, as certain incidents, like our hero’s drowning, are far out and quite a stretch. The explanation Brown offers is Oxygenated perfluorocarbons or breathable liquid. In another section, Katherine Solomon, Peter’s sister, a specialist in the Noetic Sciences, contents you can measure the weight of the soul.
The last several chapters of the book and the epilogue pretty much an add-on, not really necessary to complete the tale. They serve as a patriotic lecture by the author, a tipping of his hat to the history of the Republic and the considerable influence of Freemasonry on the design of the Nation’s capital and on our money. The 18th century was the heyday of Freemasonry and many of our Founding Fathers were Masons. They were also Deists, a spiritual perspective that blended with the Freemasonry with no conflict. They saw to it that the Governmental structures and overall plan of the political precinct had the underpinnings of sound symbolic roots, ideas generated over time starting with the Renaissance. When all was said and done the Big Secret of the Masons was, to put it in a nutshell, Praise God. I have no quarrel with that sentiment, although I might prefer Praise the Universe. Brown’s uses the phrase like he is waving a flag, chiding us all to get our act together. It’s a plea by Brown that we to find unity as a Nation where once there was discord.