Product Description

When the NSA's invincible code-breaking machine encounters a mysterious code it cannot break, the agency calls its head cryptographer, Susan Fletcher, a brilliant, beautiful mathematician. What she uncovers sends shock waves through the corridors of power. The NSA is being held hostage--not by guns or bombs -- but by a code so complex that if released would cripple U.S. intelligence. Caught in an accelerating tempest of secrecy and lies, Fletcher battles to save the agency she believes in. Betrayed on all sides, she finds herself fighting not only for her country but for her life, and in the end, for the life of the man she loves.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #274826 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01-05
• Released on: 2003-12-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 384 pages

Amazon.com Review
In most thrillers, "hardware" consists of big guns, airplanes, military vehicles, and weapons that make things explode. Dan Brown has written a thriller for those of us who like our hardware with disc drives and who rate our heroes by big brainpower rather than big firepower. It's an Internet user's spy novel where the good guys and bad guys struggle over secrets somewhat more intellectual than just where the secret formula is hidden--they have to gain understanding of what the secret formula actually is.

In this case, the secret formula is a new means of encryption, capable of changing the balance of international power. Part of the fun is that the book takes the reader along into an understanding of encryption technologies. You'll find yourself better understanding the political battles over such real-life technologies as the Clipper Chip and PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) software even though the book looks at the issues through the eyes of fiction.

Although there's enough globehopping in this book for James Bond, the real battleground is cyberspace, because that's where the "bomb" (or rather, the new encryption algorithm) will explode. Yes, there are a few flaws in the plot if you look too closely, but the cleverness and the sheer fun of it all more than make up for them. There are enough twists and turns to keep you guessing and a lot of high, gee-whiz-level information about encryption, code breaking, and the role they play in international politics. Set aside the whole afternoon and evening for it and have finger food on hand for supper--you may want to read this one straight through.

From Booklist
The National Security Agency (NSA) is one setting for this exciting thriller; the other is Seville, where on page 1 the protagonist, lately dismissed from NSA, drops dead of a supposed heart attack. Though dead, he enjoys a dramaturgical afterlife in the form of his computer program. Digital Fortress creates unbreakable codes, which could render useless NSA's code-cracking supercomputer called TRANSLTR, but the deceased programmer slyly embossed a decryption key on a ring he wore. Pursuit of this ring is the engine of the plot. NSA cryptology boss Trevor Strathmore dispatches linguist Dave Becker to recover the ring, while he and Becker's lover, senior code-cracker Susan Fletcher, ponder the vulnerability of TRANSLTR. In Seville, over-the-top chase scenes abound; meanwhile, the critical events unfold at NSA. In a crescendo of murder, infernos, and explosions, it emerges that Strathmore has as agenda that goes beyond breaching Digital Fortress, and Brown's skill at hinting and concealing Strathmore's deceit will rivet cyber-minded readers. Gilbert Taylor

Review
"In this fast-paced, plausible tale, Brown blurs the line between good and evil enough to delight patriots and paranoids alike." -Publishers Weekly

"Digital Fortress is the best and most realistic techno-thriller to reach the market in years... A chilling thrill a minute." -The Midwest Book Review

"Digital Fortress is smart and reads with all the pace of a hit movie." -Larry Lasker, Screenwriter, Wargames and Sneakers

"Exciting...will rivet cyber-minded readers." -Booklist
-- Review

Customer Reviews

Painful like an icicle jabbed thru the eye & into the brain
Wow, where to begin. This is the second Dan Brown book I've read and I'm guessing it'll likely be the last. To begin, if you plan on reading this book, forget suspending your disbelief, rather tie up your disbelief, take it out back and shoot it lest it resurface while you're reading the book.

Yes, this book contains an impressive amount of plot holes, factual errors, non-existent technology, etc. The NSA (which is in fact bigger than the CIA and the FBI) is portrayed as an organization with no more than perhaps 20 employees, none of whom come in on weekends. Employees with 170 IQs who act as if they had a 70 IQ. 12 gauge printer cable? The NSA has full-time employees that work as translators -- they don't hire temp college professors to read Chinese/Japanese. Programmers/mathematicians DO NOT MAKE an exorbitant amount of money working for the NSA -- they are still subject to the federal payscale. X-eleven, not 'X11'? Brute force code-breaking as the primary decryption method????? VSLI, not VLSI??? Tracer programs which don't have to be executed, but act on their own? Ugh.

I can overlook these things if they appeared in a well written, taut storyline. In his defense, Dan Brown doesn't include a preface to this book espousing the accuracy of the books' general facts as he does in the prefaces for Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code. So you have to take it as FICTION and not non-fiction. He does claim to have corresponded with former NSA employees during his research for this book. Having a bit of experience in the industry, I would say that either Dan Brown had no such correspondences with former NSA employees, they fed him misinformation deliberately, or Dan Brown was informed the basis of his entire book was nonsensical by these former employees, so he decided to throw all their suggestions in the trash and continued to write this book anyhow.

Regardless, the ultimate downfall of this book is BAD WRITING. The characters are flat and annoying. Their actions are contradictory to their personalities -- for no other purpose than to move the 'plot' along. I think Dan Brown has a Word-a-Day calendar and he uses that new vocabulary word several times in the 10-15 pages of writing he produces that day. Words such as 'andalusian' are used several times in a 3 'chapter' span and then never again surface throughout the book.

Most frustratingly, Dan Brown apparently never learned similes are functional and get the point across, but should not be used often as they can be extremely annoying and counterproductive to getting a point across. Towards the end of the book all these sentences are seriously used in less than 2 full pages:
- "The commander rose through the trap door LIKE Lazarus back from the dead."
- "Freon was flowing downward through the smoldering TRANSLTR LIKE oxygenated blood."
- "Susan was standing before him, damp and tousled, in his blazer. She looked LIKE a freshman coed who'd been caught in the rain. He felt LIKE the senior who'd lent her his varsity sweater." [nice double simile, huh?]
- "Her gaze was LIKE ice -- the softness was gone. Susan Fletcher stood rigid LIKE an immovable statue." [another one] "The puddle of blood beneath Hale's body had spread across the carpet LIKE an oil spill."

Believe it or not, there are more in this 2 page space, but I'll stop here. Yes, the writing is THAT groan-inducingly bad. These two classics in the book make me laugh every time I think of them -- "Like in a cheap hollywood movie, the lights went out in the bathroom just as she heard the scream," and "any more interesting than last night and I'll never walk again."

Ultimately, I did finish the book -- one reason I gave it 2 stars instead of one. A small reason was because I hate leaving a book half read, but I finished it more so to see how much more ludicrous the book would become. There's a good premise in the book, but a better writer was needed to coax it out. Dan Brown is not that writer.

Gets everything wrong
Forget about the fact that the author knows nothing about computers, programming or cryptography. This is often the case in popular literature. What makes the book really droll is its ineptitude in addressing much more basic issues, such as:

The author believes Spain is a backwards country. The swipes at Spain provide some of the most enterteining bits in the book. Here are just two of the many: "Getting an international connection from Spain was like roulette, all a matter of timing and luck". And "A punctured lung was fatal, maybe not in more medically advanced parts of the world, but in Spain, it was fatal."

The author believes oxygen is released during combustion: "She sensed [the fire] rising faster and faster, feeding on the oxygen released by the burning [computer] chips."

Basic confusion about measurments is obvious in the description of a 'vast' underground facility: "Susan stared as the dazzling facility. She vaguely remembered that 250 metric tons of earth had been excavated to create it." This would correspond to less than a 5x10x5 meters hole. Was the NSA headquarters located in somebody's basement?

But funnier still is the clumsy writing:

Brown is tone-deaf when it comes to the musicality of the language. A collision is described as a "bone-crushing crash".

Hackers breaking into a system elicit one of the many inane similes employed by Brown: "Jabba spun toward the [monitor]. Two thin lines had appeared outside the concentric circles. They looked like sperm trying to breach a reluctant egg."

The main character makes a toe-curling reference to a night of passionate love, to her fiancee: "Susan smiled coyly. 'Any more interesting than last night and I'll never walk again.'"

In the middle of a chase scene Becker runs into the Seville cathedral. A brief description of the cathedral is given, which seems lifted from a local travel brochure, ending in the delicious "To the left and right of the altar, the transept of the cross houses confessionals, sacred tombs, and additional seating." Additional seating!

My real questions are how can such garbage get published, and who is Nelson DeMille who proclaims, on the cover, Dan Brown to be 'pure genius' and 'the most accomplished writer in the country'. What country? Spain, perhaps?

Get "The Minerva Virus" Instead
If you are looking for a GOOD sotry about computer technologies that doesn't fall off a cliff, then "Digital Fortress" is not what you want to read.

This book is a major let-down. Good beginning that just deteriorates into garbage.

I did, however, just finish a GREAT book that is a true New Age Cyber-Terror Tale. Much more enjoyable, I suggest checking out "The Minerva Virus" before you waste your time with this one.