Digital Fortress

This is a terrific novel that just picks up speed as it goes with all sorts of little twists and turns and chances to try to guess what’s going on. Occasionally you can if you’re good at that, but he keeps injecting new things that you can’t know. For computer geeks it’s really great. For people who think about the NSA and secrecy it’s fascinating. Kind of makes you wonder how the NSA and others involved may have tweaked it!

I read this book in one sitting. It grabs you from the get go and doesn’t let go. A thriller for sure. Doesn’t disappoint. Highly recommend. You just can’t go wrong with Dan Brown. I’ve yet to be disappointed! Not even for a chapter. Can’t wait for the next one!!

All of Dan Brown’s books are first rate but this one is especially compelling. If you have any knowledge of computers at all it is nirvana if you don’t you will want to learn more about them. It is a thrill ride from beginning to end!

Three times I figured out the answer before the brilliant main characters did. Either I'm brilliant or they aren't.Otherwise a decent thriller.

I read all of Dan Brown's Robert Langdon books and I really liked them, so I finally decided to get the other two (Digital Fortress and Deception Point) and see what I would think of them. Well, I can honestly say I enjoyed Digital Fortress much more than the Langdon series.The story starts with Susan Fletcher waking up to find out her fiance, David Becker, is gone somewhere for work, spoiling her plans for the weekend. And then she is also called in to work. Susan works for the NSA, in the crypto department, where their big computer, TRANSLTR, decodes emails all day long and searches for terrorist emails. TRANSLTR is now trying to decode the pass key to a file and it has been working on it for 16 hours, unsuccessfully. This is unheard of; an unbreakable code.Meanwhile, David Becker has been sent to Spain to retrieve the belongings of a dead man. Turns out David was sent to Spain by Susan's boss and in those belongings they expect to find a written copy of the pass key to break that code. And that's as far as I want to go in the story, so I don't spoil anything.This story is a thriller, keeping the reader on edge almost from the beginning. It bounces back and forth from two or three scenes with exciting situations in each. I found it hard to put down once I started. I loved the story, and enjoyed all the twists. Some of it was a little predictable, and there were a couple of flaws that I had to overlook, but I really did love the book.

Spoiler Alert. I usually figure things out before they are spelled out. Not in this novel. The happy ending isn't obvious until it happens.

And as fiction... Dan Brown, what is your background? How did you know this in 1998? I about fell over, reading this. "Shockwave Rider" and now this. I half expect black unmarked band to roll up on both of us. It should be a movie, like the other books, but they'll never do it. Wow.

All the elements we have come to associate with Dan Brown are there. Some codes must be understood and some dire threat averted by people who need all their ingenuity to survive, all in about 24 hours. Chapters are short, language simple and suspense builds in no time. There are some normal folk we can relate to, some horrific baddies intent on evil, and one that seems to mutate from one to the other. It is a typical suspenseful thriller.This one is set in a high tech US Military base and also Spain in the 1990s. While the plot twists and turns like strands of spaghetti, we get a glimpse into life in the computer world, the long anti-social hours of the era in a sterile environment like nothing in the outside world and caricatures of people we might meet. There are those who rise to senior management with people skills as well as technical smarts and with good coping skills. And others with technical ability who lack common sense; these floundered in real world situations and were actually vulnerable. Some high achievers in this project-driven world have an obsessive desire to achieve their given assignments and tasks, including self imposed ones. And there is an introduction to the language that the commercial release of the internet brought to the world; concepts like secure encoding for email messages, security software to keep out virus and worms, key loggers, plus chips, stats and more. And how much money could be made from developing such software. Well painted Mr. Brown.Woven into the plot is a disaffected Japanese employee who has been sacked. He wants the world to know that this base has the ability to spy on any email, even though it is only those who attract adverse attention that they have the capacity to deal with. A theme here is the concern about individual privacy that was surfacing in the 1990s. He devises an ingenious way to hold his old employers to ransom, but dies in Spain too soon to give them deliverance. He makes a dying gesture, a sign. A professor, engaged to one of the cryptographers, is hired to go to Spain and retrieve his belongings. Soon he is a hunted man who needs all his ingenuity to survive. I loved the way he cheats death here, despite repeatedly hopeless odds; the sort of thing that brings howls of laughter from today's moviegoers faced with similar situations in early film noir. And the descriptions of the interesting places, such as Santa Cruz and nearby Seville Cathedral with the tomb of Christopher Columbus, that he moves through on his flight through Seville. He is an early prototype for Robert Langdon folks.Back at the base the bodies mount with the suspense. As they clarify what they are dealing with, having bypassed the obvious and ignored repeated common sense observations, the motives of various characters become clear to us. Disaster strikes, but the heroine escapes to save the day. There are some brief humorous interludes, but also a very touching one explaining that our disaffected worker was Japanese and deformed as a result of radiation to his mother from the American bombs that ended WWII. He was disowned by his father at birth because he was considered to bring dishonour to the family. Yet he passed all employment checks and had no animosity towards America.Yes, it was generally formulaic, but nevertheless I enjoyed it. A light read, reasonably well done and an interesting change from my usual tastes.

Dan Brown never disappoints. Edge of your seat, keeping you in suspense right to the last chapter. This would make a great movie.

This is an awesome book. It keeps you guessing what's next. This book is ideal for those who like mystery.

I believe he wrote this book before The Da Vinci Code. I always thought this one would make a good film too.

Estupendo libro, para mi gusto hasta es un poco breve y el final como que lo apresuran, mas recomendable que el mismo código da vinci y otros, de hecho es mi segunda copia porque lo quería recuperar ya que el previo lo doné en un viaje.

While seemingly slow to start, you'll be sucked into this vortex of intelligence, conspiracy, and the abstract.The interesting part is that this could happen, now....