Book review: Langdon is back with a bang

'The Secret of Secrets' is the sixth book that Dan Brown has written starring Robert Langdon as the unflinching hero 

Dan Brown’s latest thriller, 'The Secret of Secrets', is set in the captivating city of Prague. Picture: Getty

• The Secret of Secrets 
• Dan Brown 
• Penguin Random House, €24.99

You would probably have better luck winning the lottery than finding someone who hasn’t heard of The Da Vinci Code. 

Dan Brown’s bestseller has sold over 80m copies since it was released back in 2003, and he shows no sign of retiring his well-known protagonist, Robert Langdon — who is played by America’s sweetheart Tom Hanks in the movie adaptations — anytime soon.

The Secret of Secrets is the sixth book that Brown has written starring Langdon as the unflinching hero. 

It comes after a rather long hiatus of eight years, in which fans were wondering if the beloved professor would grace their pages again.

His next adventure starts off with a bang in the city of Prague, where Langdon, a once terminal bachelor, travels alongside Katherine Solomon, a scientist fascinated by human consciousness.

Katherine was first introduced to readers in Brown’s third book, The Lost Symbol, and now she has her hands full making breakthroughs in the field of noetic science.

“Langdon would never forget his first day with Katherine in this mystical place — losing themselves in a labyrinth of cobblestone streets … dashing hand in hand through a misty rain … taking cover beneath an archway of Kinsky Palace in Old Town Square … and there, breathless, in the shadows of the Clock Tower … their very first kiss, which felt surprisingly effortless after decades of friendship.”

Her scientific discoveries aren’t to everyone’s taste however, and Katherine stands on the cusp of publishing a book that could change everything, including our way of looking at the world.

Just hours after she delivers a lecture to an excited audience, her novel’s manuscript is stolen from its publishing house in New York and her agent is kidnapped in the middle of the night.

While this unfolds, Langdon wakes up in a five-star hotel on the other side of the world, with an unaware Katherine sleeping peacefully beside him. 

He straps on his Mickey Mouse watch and goes for a swim while admiring Prague’s architecture, visions of a relaxed breakfast with his partner flooding through his head.

But when he returns to the hotel, his experienced senses tingle and he leaps into action, convinced that a bomb is about to go off in the building. 

After pulling the fire alarm and finding his bed empty, Langdon panics and plunges into the nearby icy Vltava River … only for the hotel not to explode.

He is soon questioned by impatient Czech police who demand a logical explanation for the chaos he caused, but Langdon won’t reveal anything until he knows Katherine is safe — if only anyone knew where she was. 

All the while Langdon’s newest foe is making moves in the seedy underground. 

The Golěm, a shadowy figure shrouded in mystery, stalks the city covered in clay, convinced he is a creature straight out of ancient folklore. 

He is hell-bent on protecting an unnamed woman he obsesses over from afar and will stop at nothing to have her all to himself.

“The Golěm knew the clay monster’s tale by heart because it was his own — a protective spirit … thrust into physical form … tasked with sacrificing his own comfort to carry another’s pain.”

While the novel itself takes place over a period of 24 hours, it would be difficult to actually digest everything that happens in real time. 

The lengthy tome is almost 700 pages long and bursting with dense, Wikipedia-esque descriptions that can pull you out of the narrative if you’re not careful, so reading in short bursts will be more than enough to satisfy even the most hardcore fan — and maybe it might be wise to have a dictionary to hand.