Inferno

This is Dan Brown's fourth Robert Langdon novel. I liked it. I didn't read the last one, The Lost Symbol, but I liked Angels and Demons and The DaVinci Code. This one is right up there as far as drawing you into the story and keeping you involved right until the end.

Langdon wakes up in a hospital in Florence, Italy, suffering a gunshot wound and unable to remember how he got there. When someone enters with the apparent intention of shooting him, Dr. Sienna Brooks helps him escape, and the adventure begins. It seems that some crazy person has planted a virus somewhere in Florence, and Robert must use his knowledge of Dante's Inferno to figure out the where/why/when. Sienna is helping him, and luckily she's brilliant and beautiful.

 Brown is certainly not what my writing professor would call a "good" writer, and this is certainly not great literature. But Brown's talent is in creating a story and a situation that immediately draws you in and doesn't let you go - I HAD to know what was going to happen next. And the fact that the reader gets a guided tour of Florence is pretty exciting too. The typical Brown switch-backs and flip-flops kept me guessing, but I thought the ending was just a little flat.

I would definitely recommend this book, but I have never and will never see a movie based on one of the Langdon books. The reason: the horrible miscasting of Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon. I mean, really, how could anyone who has read one of these novels ever have pictured Hanks in the role?

Inferno