The Lost Symbol

Thanks to the massive success of THE DA VINCI CODE, which sold around 80 million copies worldwide, Dan Brown was burdened with a puzzling predicament every bit as fiendish as those routinely faced by his hero, the swashbuckling symbologist Robert Langdon--how to follow up one of the most popular books of all time. But Brown has risen to the challenge magnificently, with a big assist from one of the most code-crazed and symbol-ridden societies in history, the Freemasons. Langdon has been summoned to Washington D.C. by his old friend Peter Solomon, but when he arrives at the Capitol building to meet Solomon, Langdon instead finds friend's severed hand, which has been tattooed and strategically placed beneath a portrait of an ascendant George Washington. And the chase is on, as Langdon and Katherine Solomon, Peter's sister, must avert a national disaster by deciphering a series of cryptic clues hidden in the architecture of America's capital. Waiting at the end of the trail is a nefarious monk named Mal'akh, whose masochistic tendencies include tattoos and self-castration. Langdon and Solomon's riddle-fueled pursuit will eventually entail the Library of Congress, the headquarters of the CIA, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institute, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and several other notable sites. And while THE LOST SYMBOL might lack the incendiary subject matter of its predecessor, conspiracy junkies and proponents of mythic sea creatures will be likely titillated by Brown's controversial contention that there is tank of giant squids hidden in the archives of the Smithsonian.