DIGITAL FORTRESS

By: Nicolas Dunlavy
Class: Mrs. Smith
Book: Digital Fortress

Brown, Dan. Digital Fortress
U.S.A. St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2004
Aurora Public Library
$7.99

Susan Fletcher is the main character, who is the head cryptographer for the National Security Agency. One day she comes upon a code named “Digital Fortress” which is unbreakable. Even NSA’s supercomputer, TRANSLTR cannot break the code. They later find out the code was written by Ensei Tankado, a Japanese cryptographer who used to work for the NSA but he was fired. He is against the agency’s intrusion into people’s privacy and wants them to go public with their technology. If they do not agree, he will auction off the passkey to unlock the code to the world. This would result in the destruction of their technology and terrorist around the world could talk in privacy without any intrusion. This leads Commander Strathmore, who is head of the cryptography department and deputy director of the NSA to send David Becker to Seville, Spain to find the passkey. The situation becomes more complex and the characters intensions change dramatically during the story as it becomes life threatening for many of them.

Dan Brown’s books can have subjects such history, religion, and science that can be very confusing, but his writing makes these very interesting subjects understandable and extremely exciting. Brown never writes a dull part or chapter in the books he writes, allowing them to be filled with travel and thrilling experiences which never allow you to set the book down.

This book definitely deserves a heart. It is as good and exciting as his famous book The Da Vinci Code and has the suspense of Angels and Demons. With 429 pages, it can be long for non-readers but the story is so well written with suspense that the pages will fly by. The ending conclusion of this book will have you astonished to which side the characters stood on and how they fooled not only the other characters in the book, but also the reader.