The power of Brown

Never mind the plot. Dan Brown helps boost tourism again by showcasing Spain, writes Elena Koshy

are we heading?”, shrouding his answers with intrigue, mystery, symbolism, coupled with many heart-racing scenes atypical of his novels.

The fifth of Brown’s bestselling series starring Robert Langdon, the Harvard professor of symbology and religious iconology, takes Langdon on a trip to Spain to witness his former student Edmond Kirsch (an archetypal Elon Musk) who’s a tech genius on the precipice of a ground-breaking revelation.

The revelation Kirsch is about to unleash to the world contains information that promises to answer our fundamental questions about existence, forever casting aspersions on the world’s religions.

Langdon arrives at the ultramodern “swirling collage of warped metallic forms” Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao to attend Kirsch’s major reveal that “will change the face of science forever” and drive religious leaders the world over in apoplectic fits.

The meticulously-orchestrated evening suddenly erupts into chaos as Kirsch is assassinated and his precious discovery is under threat of being lost forever.

Within the hour, Langdon is on the run with the beautiful Ambra Vidal (the elegant museum director who’s also the future Queen of Spain) in a “deadly game of catand-mouse” being chased by baddies all over renowned sites in Spain, with boats, Gulfstream jets and Tesla self-driving cars to ferry the characters between locations.

Through the corridors of history, religion and modern art, Langdon and Vidal race against time to retrieve Kirsch’s work, evading a nameless villain who seem to exert immense power all the way from Spain’s Royal Palace itself and who’ll stop at nothing to silence Edmond Kirsch and those who want to reveal the tech genius’ controversial discovery.

Forget sinister archbishops, an Artificial Intelligence named Winston, a morose former Navy admiral with a penchant for drink and revenge and a myriad of wizened