Digital Fortress by Dan Brown (Reviewed by Brian)

"Who will guard the guards?"

Susan Fletcher, the National Security Agency's head cryptographer, receives a call from her fiance, David Becker, to postpone their trip due to an emergency and promising to call back to explain. While Susan waits, her NSA Deputy Director of Operations, Trevor Strathmore, calls with an emergency. The N.S.A.'s best code-breaking machine, TRANSLTR is having difficulty breaking a new type of code and it appears that its programmer has mysteriously died in Spain. Unknown to her, David Becker is heading to Spain to retrieve the key to the code

Digital Fortress is the first novel by Dan Brown, and unlike his famous fourth book, The Da Vinci Code, does not challenge religious beliefs. Rather, it challenges whether the authorities should be able to ignore civilian privacy for the good of the country.

I enjoyed the way Brown uses a lot of minor characters to make the story rich and interesting. By doing this, we learn a great deal of information which helps us to understand the story.

Like all great thrillers, the book has a dramatic twist which was not easy to predict, teaching us that characters may not be as they seem.

Personally, I loved Digital Fortress. It is, in fact, one of my favourite thrillers and I would rate it 8.5/10. There is nothing in particular that I want to criticise about the book. I think it shows you the standards of what thillers should be like. It has rich, interesting story with a memorable twist. If you are looking for something fun to read in your spare time, this is just the book for you.

P.S. If you don't read every chapter carefully, you are gonna have hard time solving the puzzle on the last page of the book.