Tag: Dan Brown

Don’t put all your research into the book

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing2 Comments

For years, people have made fun of The Da Vinci Code for containing so many mini-lectures about subjects having to do with the Holy Grail. I suppose Dan Brown thought readers wouldn’t understand the plots and themes without all the background material. I thought it was distracting.

A laptop computer next to archival materialsI just finished another book by an author I like whose main character kept calling an expert about cults in an attempt to learn which ones are harmless and which ones aren’t. I don’t really think the extended information advanced the story. The information did relate to the plot, but it didn’t need to be in the book.

It’s almost as though the author became fascinated by cults and decided that the reader would also be fascinated by them. Not really. And, if so, we know how to use Google, the library, and the resource books available at Amazon and elsewhere.

When an author does this, critics often say “your research is showing.” Some critics even might suggest that the author wanted an excuse to talk about, say–cults, and wrote a novel to include what s/he had learnt about them. How much is too much. That’s a hard call to make. The detail can add ambiance while making the plot more understandable.  And yet, you don’t want readers to feel like they’re reading a research paper.

Lack ops books are famous for including a ton of information about weapons and weapons systems. Perhaps publishers and readers demand it. I like black ops novels but usually, skim over the weapons’ specifications. They don’t matter to me.

Every genre seems to have reader expectations about this kind of detail. Books about famous battles are, of course, historical novels and are expected to provide that history. Other books are, I think, better suited to using a lighter touch.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “At Sea,” a Vietnam war novel set on board an aircraft carrier on which he served during that war. I included research-type information for background but kept it within the confines of what sailors in that situation would actually say in conversation. The cover picture comes from a photograph I took of the aircraft carrier’s flight deck.

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‘The Templar Revelation’ by Picknett and Prince

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn religion

I’m re-reading this book because, like a mountain, it was there. (Amazon’s page listing reminds me that I bought it in 2004, seven years after it was released.) “There” in this case means that the book was sitting on my bookshelf in plain view when I put my feet up on my desk and wondered what to read next after finishing the Travis McGee thriller. McGee and the Knights Templar have very little in common, so my reading trend of late has more to do with having nothing new in the house than it does with a consistent, well-managed approach to reading.

Unlike MacDonald’s The Dreadful Lemon Sky, this book promises “The secret code of Leonardo de Vinci Revealed” and that I will learn about the “Secret guardians of the true identity of Christ.” Good Lord, I’m thinking, there appear to be conspiracy theories higher than Mt. Everest when it comes to that old-time religion. A lot of people were wondering about that old-time religion when this book came out since Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982) found a diverse audience and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code was about to hit the fan in 2003.

I thrive off this kind of stuff, not because I pay much attention to the daily conspiracy theories coming out of Washington, but because–to my ministers’ displeasue–I’ve always had a lot of questions about the politics behind the Bible’s selection of books and about the “stuff” that seems to be missing from Sunday school class and vacation Bible school. In those days, I was seen as disruptive. Now, other than an occasional post on this blog, I don’t say much about religion. As Salman Rushie found out, saying things about religion isn’t safe.

Religion, it seems to be, has created one hell of a mess throughout the world when you consider wars found over it, people burnt at the stake because of it, and books banned from libraries because the town’s rulers believe stuff that doesn’t fit their kids’ available fiction. So, I’m not about to put a sign in my yard that says Mary Magdalene was Jesus’s wife. I think she was, but in our neighborhood, it’s much safer to put up a “John 3.16” sign than anything more inflammatory. Years ago, the signs would have said “Impeach Earl Warren.”

I’m enjoying re-reading The Templar Revelation because it contains the kind of subject matter that it’s not safe to talk about. No, I don’t believe it lock, stock, and barrel, but I like being free to consider the evidence in the privacy of my home since I’m not really free to say it on Facebook or in a letter to the editor of my daily newspaper.  Freedom of speech and freedom of religion seem to be controlled by the crazy people with basements full of guns.

—Malcolm

Mystery/Thrillers with ancient secrets

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, writing

Looking at the novels by James Rollins, Dan Brown, and Katherine Neville, one finds a common thread that includes ancient secrets, modern-day conspiracies, hypothetical explanations for gaps in recorded history, and experts with a lot of knowledge to explain to the reader and many of the characters the significance of what is being found and how dangerous it is for the world if the secrets turn out to be worse than we thought.

The Last Odyssey: A Thriller (Sigma Force Novels Book 15) by [James Rollins]James Rollins The Last Odyssey focuses on Homer’s stories and suggests that the events really happened and, worse yet, that the powers of the gods were actual and, if found, would tip the balance of power today.

While I enjoy reading these novels and playing “what if” on a huge, global scale, the research involved just to nail down the known facts is more than I want to tackle.

Consider the research you woul have to do if your “what if” is “What if Leonardo Da Vinci drew a preliminary version of today’s F-150 pickup truck and that ‘the bad guys’ stole these plans and made a protetype that used Greek Fire as for fuel”?

Typically, the story might begin when a mechanical genius who is researching old records of the Ford Motor Company and uncovers “something odd about” the F-150’s predecessor truck, the 1950 model F-3. Let’s say that its revelopment moved along faster than it should, based on the scienceof the times. This leads the researcher to the personal libraries of the truck’s designers and one of them had a passion for Da Vinci.

As you’ll see after reading many of these novels, thbe minute somebody finds about about the designer’s passion for Da Vinci, massive forces and organizations will appear to steal the records, destroy the records, or use them as the basis for negative technology that might alter the universe. There are gun fights, people are captured, reseachers travel to Rome and gain entrance to the Vatican library, etc. Needless to say, finding the true nature of the Ford F-150 and its predecessor  Bonus Built trucks is a race against time.

Feel free to take this idea and run with it. If you end up writing a successful novel with a title like “Found On Road Dead,” good for you. Please mention me in the acknowledgements. It’s all yours because I just don’t have the patience to do the research. Goodness knows, my four hoodoo books set in the 1950s Florida Panhandle required more fact finding than anyone might guess.

I can see, though, why books in this genre (whatever it might be called) are popular. People love conspiracies, knowing secrets, and being the first to solvce old mysteries. Especially those that show us that old myths really weren’t myths.

—Malcolm

Backstory can detract from the primary plot

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

 

Katherine Neville (The Eight, The Fire) is generally credited with pioneering the quest/adventure novel in which the current-day and primary plot is greatly influenced by past events. Dan Brown made the style famous in The Da Vinci Code and related novels.

The Da Vinci Code had a compelling plot that kept readers engaged in spite of the fact that great swaths of text were instructional in nature, that is, one character tells another character about the history and symbolism as a device to inform the reader what the current-day plot means.

I’ve just completed reading three quest/adventure novels that, while they kept me reading, spent too much time in the backstory. I won’t mention the author because my intent here is not to trash her books. We have current-say plots which are exciting, but the meaning behind them comes from memories of part events or past lives that might have occurred many centuries ago. In general, I liked the books. However, she spent too much time with the backstory.

Imagine this. A character is trying to puzzle out a mystery and it’s kind of a page-turner. Then, the next chapter is titled Accra, Ghana, 1578. Suddenly the current-day plot is put on hold and the reader finds himself/herself reading about people s/he’s never heard of from many centuries ago. In some cases, they’re living heroic lives; in other cases, they’re everyday people doing about their daily tasks.

Then the novel switches back to the current day for a chapter before the author delays the mainstream plot with a chapter called, let’s say, Constantine, Algeria, 1830, and now we’re suddenly following a French soldier at the beginning of France’s occupation of the country.

While these past events usually factor into the reader’s understanding of the mainstream plot before the novel ends, the past-history events are a distraction. For one thing, they stop the present-day story and introduce new characters. For another thing, they drag on for multiple pages when all the reader wants to do is get back to the primary story. In each case, the novelist would better serve his/her story by cutting the number of words in each of these ancient history chapters.

It’s interesting, as it was in Neville’s and Brown’s novels to see the influence of the past, but it becomes a tedious distraction when past events occupy a large portion of the novel. Even if we learn, let’s say, that our protagonist name Dan actually was that French soldier in a past life, it doesn’t justify (in my view) spending ten pages in Algeria while the primary plot sits in limbo.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Special Investigative Reporter,” recently released by Thomas-Jacob Publishing.

Too much interior monologue will kill a good story

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn fiction, writers, writing8 Comments

“Interior monologue, in dramatic and nondramatic fiction, narrative technique that exhibits the thoughts passing through the minds of the protagonists. These ideas may be either loosely related impressions approaching free association or more rationally structured sequences of thought and emotion.” – Encyclopaedia Britannica

True stream-of-consciousness fiction can yield a lot of exciting passages about a character’s inner life (which s/he may or may not confuse with reality) as well as plot-advancing impressions that mesh well with the story line.

When I think of “too much interior monologue,” I’m not bashing well-written stream of consciousness techniques in spite of the fact that readers who don’t like literary fiction will hand out one- and two-star reviews for such novels on Amazon. When an author’s protagonist thinks about the situation s/he is in, that’s interior monologue.

Naturally, it’s normal and relevant to think about the situations we’re in. On the other hand, when this thinking does on for hundreds of words in multiple places in a novel, then it is likely to ruin the story. Writers are told that most of what they put in a novel should advance the plot. Overused interior monologue doesn’t advance the plot: instead it puts the plot on hold.

I just finished reading a novel with an interesting plot. A protagonist with a history of panic attacks which s/he manages with prescription medication (as much as possible) undergoes a traumatic experience before being put into an unrelated but more dangerous situation where her life and the lives of others is at risk.

I’m not going to identify the novel or even count the number of words in it and compute what percentage of it is plot-stalling interior monologue. My impression, though, is that 40% of the novel is interior monologue along the lines of. . .I need to keep my self from screaming. . .I need to relax. . .maybe I didn’t see what I think I saw. . .can I trust person XYZ. . .maybe if I told my story and/or got certain people to trust me, they would believe me and/or help me.

Stop Talking to Yourself and Do Something!

A little bit of this is fine. But when it goes on and on and on, there’s really nothing happening. Yes, maybe this would happen in real life, but writers are also told that writing fiction that copies real life–as a 24/7 video camera might view it–is bad because a lot of that real life stuff is trivial. In the novel I just finished, the character’s fight to keep her panic under control and her considerations about what may or may not be happening can be conveyed to the reader much faster.

When I see excessive amounts of interior monologue, my first thought is that the writer doesn’t really have enough depth in the plot to make a novel. That is, there are two few events and dialogue passages to sustain a book-length story. So, the interior monologue pads the length of the book out to the minimum number of words the author or publisher feels are necessary to call the book a novel rather than a short story, novelette, or novella.

I liked the plot of the novel I just finished. I liked the satisfactory ending and the fact that the protagonist’s experience ended up making her a stronger person ready to take stock of a lot of decisions about her life that had been stalled. I think it’s a shame, though, that the story was dragged down by the interior monologue instead of being pushed forward with a greater number of plot elements.

Dan Brown’s “Teaching Moments” Come to Mind

Dan Brown and others who write novels about ancient secrets with a modern twist to them are often criticized for stopping the action through the insertion of a lot of exposition in which one character tells another character what the ancient secrets are all about. This is a slick way of telling the reader what those secrets are about. If you were going to write a spoof of such books, you’d have one character pull a knife on another character and then–so to speak–freeze the action while the character tells somebody else why all this matters (for, say, a thousand words) and then go back to the knife fight.

That really tears apart the pacing of the action. It’s also very frustrating to the reader. Excessive interior monologue has the same negative impacts.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Conjure Woman’s Cat,” “Eulalie and Washerwoman,” and other magical realism and fantasy novels.

When does the research for a novel get out of hand?

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing4 Comments

If you’ve been reading my posts for a long time, you know I take issue with fiction that spends a lot of time teaching its readers something rather than telling a story. In different ways, The Da Vinci Code and the Celestine Prophecy are examples of this. Actually, I enjoyed both books–probably because I liked the messages. I’ve also like Katherine Neville, whose 1988 novel The Eight more or less introduced the heavy-on-teaching/mystery-thriller/ancient-secrets approach to fiction that Brown, Raymond Khoury, and others have used  in a fair number of other novels. When one finds the secret and/or the message fascinating, it’s easy to forgive the fact that these novels have too much lecturing in them.

researchFor the rest of us, our research gets out of hand when we become so fascinated by it, that we left it take over our fiction–presumably, this happens when think our readers will love that research as much as we do or when we’re just sloppy.

Before I write, my research always gets out of hand, as others see it, because I insist on knowing a lot more about the novels’ subject matter, location, and characters than I can possibly use. My conjure-related, blues-related, and other historical notes for Conjure Woman’s Cat and Eulalie and Washerwoman are longer than the combined word count of the books.

I do this because I want to internalize the information so that whenever and wherever it’s needed in the story, it naturally appears there without seeming to intrude. In “real life,” most of us act in accordance with our views and beliefs without the need for a Dan Brown-style lecture in the middle of an event that explains to others who are there why we’re doing what we’re doing.  I do too much research because I want the result of it to be a correct novel that doesn’t have to tell the readers why it’s a correct novel insofar as, say, conjure or the blues or the Florida piney woods go.

One never wants a reviewer to say “the research shows” about a book. When it does, it’s gotten out of hand.

One thing one learns when writing nonfiction is that the more often one quotes other people (other than in research papers where you have to do it), the less one understands the material. If you understand it, you don’t need to tell it through others’ words. I believe the same thing about research and the novel. If you have to keep pasting in globs of research, then you probably don’t understand your own subjects, locations and characters well enough to just tell the story.

Yes, it’s easy to say a little too much here and a little too much there and only realize later (probably after the book has been printed and it’s too late to change it) that while correct facts and ambiance are important, they need to support the story and the story’s wont to be continuously moving forward. Right now, my research for an upcoming novel is almost out of hand because I’m fascinated with the subject matter and could just as well keep reading about it if I don’t admit that–past a point–I’m delaying writing the book rather than creatively getting ready to write the book.

So, it’s almost time to stop and to let what I’ve learned become a part of me. Only then will it help the story. Just a few more pages to read, and then I’ll start writing, oh and just quickly check another book or two, yeah, right, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

–Malcolm

To learn more about my two conjure novels, read my spooky web page. 

 

Review: ‘Inferno’ by Dan Brown

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, reviews6 Comments

InfernoThree things are clear about Dan Brown’s novels: The reviews don’t matter because fans are more addicted to them than drugs. Years from now, his fiction will comprise the body of work most-often associated with the spate of globe-spanning puzzle novels linking historic events to  modern day criminal plots, even though the form was pioneered by Katherine Neville in The Eight. And, while his style continues to evolve, every book he writes will forever be chasing the sensation of The Da Vinci Code.

Inferno is another Robert Langdon thriller that mixes exotic locations (Florence and Venice) and ancient symbols and texts (Dante and The Divine Comedy) with a world shaking danger (the threat of a plague). Brown uses an interesting plot device here: Landgon wakes up in a Florence hospital with a head wound and retrograde amnesia. He has no idea why he’s in Florence and who may or may not be trying to kill him. (It becomes clear before he leaves the hospital room that somebody is.)

He must simultaneously solve the puzzle of symbols linking a prospective plague threat from a genetic engineer concerned about reducing the world’s population and the personal puzzle about his nightmarish dreams and how they’re connected to the story’s prospective heroes and villains. While solving the puzzle, Langdon and Dr. Sienna Brooks find numerous secret doorways and panels, life threatening moments and people who are determined to stop them for reasons as yet unknown.

In the past, Brown has been criticized by using endless historical and cultural monologues from Langdon and others to fill secondary characters in on the importance of historical events and their related symbolism. Obviously, this device was used as a way of telling the readers how centuries old stories and symbols played into the solution of an urgent problem of the present day.

Brown has toned down those monologues a great deal in Inferno and provided dialogue that more naturally fits into a story with one chase scene after another. You will no longer find five-hundred-word Langdon lectures being delivered while the bad guys are only seconds away. You will find a lot of Florence and Venice travelogue.

Brown describes the streets, museums, and ancient buildings in exhaustive detail. Imagine being chased across a town by the bad guys while having the luxury to notice every building, monument and street corner along the way, including those that don’t pertain to the story. The descriptions slow down the action but are easy to skip.

The descriptions also serve the plot because they tie into Dante and to the mad scientist who’s a Dante aficionado. The travelogues allow physical time to pass in the novel so that Langdon will have an opportunity to process the symbolism as well as the returning snippets of his fragmented memory.

Brown has done a good job stirring the characters into an ever-changing  mix of people who–at any given moment–might be trustworthy or untrustworthy. The characters’ motivations and allegiances aren’t engraved in stone. The novel’s over-arching themes are the dangers of overpopulation to humankind’s survival and whether or not one should use cutting-edge advances in genetic engineering to “fix” the problem before Mother Nature solves it by purging the planet of a lot of people.

Since the themes are real, they add a compelling dose of prospective reality to a story filled with symbols, iconography, Italian art and architecture, and the multiple meanings of Dante’s levels of hell. For Langdon and the other characters, a real or figurative hell may well be the story’s destination. Brown, I suspect, hopes readers will ponder whether hell is also Earth’s destiny.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of contemporary fantasy novels, including the recently release story of love and destiny, “The Seeker.”

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What if Harry Potter Bought the House Next Door to You?

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Fantasy, Harry Potter, magic6 Comments

WHAT IF?

Few questions are more important to a writer. So, what if Harry Potter bought the house next door and wasn’t shy about who he was and what he could do? Really, Harry Potter himself, not Daniel Radcliffe.

Of course, the real Harry Potter—if there is one—is part of a secret world that “in real life” we would never know anything about. There’s a reason for that: people who are different are usually shunned, persecuted or worse.

The first traditional rule for the adept—alchemist, psychic, shaman, wizard—is KEEP SILENT. If he lived next door to any of us, the real Harry Potter would probably appear as unassuming as Clark Kent in the Superman stories.

But, as long as we’re playing WHAT IF?, let’s say Harry is sick and tired of staying in his figurative closet. (Actually, he did stay in a closet at his foster parents’ house—what a nice touch of symbolism on Rowling’s part).

Time for the Welcome Wagon

When a new family moves into a neighborhood, people are curious. They drop by with pies and casseroles partly as a way of starting things off with a friendly “hello” and partly as a way of getting a look at the new folks to assess how they’re going to fit in. Times might be changing, but even today there are many neighborhoods in which the “welcome committee” will be displeased if a Black, Jew, Muslim, or Gay answers the door. In other neighborhoods, Whites, Catholics, and Japanese “don’t belong.”

In scholarly literature, those who don’t belong are often referred to as The Other. They are outside the mainstream. In the Harry Potter books, witches, elves, wizards and giants are outside the mainstream of English society. Even within the magical world itself, there’s a hierarchy about who’s “in” and who’s “out.”

Fantasy offers readers unlimited opportunities to come to terms with what’s different, what goes against the mainstream scheme of things, and to consider whether the consensus reality of “real life” must be engraved in stone or not. Fantasy lets us safely question “what is.” While reading a Harry Potter book or watching a Harry Potter movie, it’s easy to feel simpatico with Harry, Ron, Hermione,  and Dumbledore, and perhaps even to feel a bit sorry for the everyday people in London who don’t know anything about the magic in their midst. Just think of all they’re missing!

But What Happens When We Get to the End of the Book and the Last Movie?

Here come Harry’s friends!

Picture this. The moving van has pulled away and the new family—who looked normal enough while carrying boxes into the house—has gone inside. So, you put together your best cherry pie or your favorite Hamburger Helper meal (depending on your skill in the kitchen), and you go next door and ring the bell.

A dark-haired guy comes to the door. He’s wearing well-aged dungarees and a polo shirt. He smiles and says “Hello.” But, before you can introduce yourself, his son—whom you can see down the entry hall in the living room—shouts Avis! and a flock of pigeons appears out of nowhere and flies past you en route to the wide open sky.

What happens now?

  • The guy who answered the door says, “Hi, I’m Harry,” and acts like the thing with the birds didn’t happen.
  • You ask, “How did he do that” and Harry says, “No big deal, it’s just James Sirius having a bit of fun.”

It’s not quite like seeing it in the movie, is it? As I play with this WHAT IF question, I like to think that the world has progressed a lot between the time when TV viewers were watching Rob and Laura Petrie at 148 Bonnie Meadow Road in the Dick Van Dyke Show and all the Wisteria Lane families on Desperate Housewives. We are more likely to welcome Harry today than we were in the 1960s, aren’t we?

What do you think happens if Harry Potter moves in to your neighborhood and, along with his wife Ginny, makes no secret of his skill with spell casting and potions? Will the neighbors accept him with open arms the way they did while reading Rowling’s books, or will they stay away?

This is not a WHAT IF question I plan to use for the plot of my next novel. If I were Dan Brown, I might show that Rowling’s books weren’t fiction at all and that the guy next door is probably attracting the wrong kind of attention from, say, Homeland Security, the mob, and various terrorist groups. If I were Katherine Neville, I might show that in spite of his skills, Harry needs the help of my protagonist, say, Bill Smith, who has to go on a search for the real Nicholas Flamel to save the neighborhood. Or, if I were Tom Clancy, I’d probably have a couple of CIA operatives show up to assess “which side” Harry was planning to help “win” with his most powerful spells.

Do We Want the Fantasy Characters to Just Stay in Their Books Where They Belong?

We love fantasy whether it’s epic, contemporary, urban, steampunk, heroic or another sub-genre. In the books, Harry Potter was viewed as the hero who saved the magical world and (by readers) as one of the most-loved characters in fiction.

But WHAT IF Harry, Ginny and the kids moved into your neighborhood. Would it all become one happy family with baseball games on Saturdays and Quidditch matches on Sundays? Or, would Harry, Ginny, and their friends from Hogwarts and Diagon Alley remain separate in their house and yard as The Other?

What I think would happen and what I would like to see happen don’t match up here. Even so, I like asking the question WHAT IF?

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of contemporary fantasy, including the 2011 novel Sarabande from Vanilla Heart Publishing.

Book Review: ‘The Lost Symbol’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books4 Comments

The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon, #3) The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Now boarding on track 33, the Symbolism Express departing for the Freemasons, the Invisible College, the Office of Security, the SMSC, the Institute of Noetic Sciences and multiple points around the cryptic compass.

Your temporal destination, not Paris and London, but Washington, D.C.

Your conductor, Harvard symbiologist Robert Langdon, the Indiana Jones of the new age.

Tied to the tracks in the gathering darkness ahead and facing certain death, if not embarrassment, another keeper of the ancient mysteries including the wisdom of Solomon, not a man of the Louvre, but a man of the Smithsonian.

Traveling alone, an attractive female relative of the man lashed to the tracks, not agent and cryptologist Sophie Neveu, but Noetic scientist Dr Katherine Solomon.

Sitting in the engineer’s seat with a small stone pyramid rather than a chalice holding down the deadman’s pedal, a rogue and tattooed Mason in search of apotheosis replaces Silas, “The Da Vinci Code’s” rogue and scourged momk as our antagonist for the evening.

Hold on. It’s going to be another bumpy ride.

Dreams of déjà vu remind you what the journey will be like: short chapters, multiple points of view, conflicting agendas with something very large (yet unknown) at stake, the thrill of the chase, the almost-sexual tension of near-satisfaction again and again as answers appear and disappear, multiple station stops for arcane wisdom instruction, and a desperate-save-humanity-hunt for secrets you’ve stared at your entire life without comprehending.

By the end of the novel, you won’t be a 33rd Degree Mason and you won’t be like unto a god in any way you can quite wrap your mind around, but you will have experienced a high-adrenaline ride. This thrill is what the journey is all about. Perhaps reality lurks around the edge of the plot and theme and perhaps sacred messages lurk within the vast white spaces between the lines of black type, but that’s not why we’re turning the pages from 1 to 509.

Dan Brown has done it again, and upon reflection at the dawn’s first light, you’ll see that he knows how to pull the right strings and push the right buttons and sprinkle the right esoteric seasonings across his smorgasbord of mysteries from around the world to keep readers addicted for the trip. On the last page, you may well hope, along with Robert Langdon and Katherine Solomon that men and women will follow the ancient maps toward their true potential; but seriously, the novel’s destination really doesn’t matter, does it, because the ride was the peak experience you were seeking when you picked up “The Lost Symbol.”

All aboard.

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Copyright (c) 2009 by Malcolm R. Campbell, author of Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire.

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