The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown (spoiler warning)

[MattBellamysMuse]

Anyone else read this?
I thought it took a while to get going but once it did I was really enjoying it. Then came the ending - what a letdown!
The whole story was built around the Ancient Mysteries, which must be protected from unworthy eyes at all costs.
To the point that men were willing to lay down their lives to protect the secret.
A secret which was hidden for centuries behind layers and layers of codes and symbols to make sure it stayed hidden.
The Ancient Mysteries had the power to elevate the reader/viewer to Godlike status if only he could reunite the two pieces of the symbolon and decipher all the codes.
And what did the ancient mysteries turn out to be?
The Bible.
The bleedin' Bible.
Read by millions around the world every day.
Hardly secret or mysterious. Utterly, utterly ridiculous.
Oh, and then Katherine reveals that she knew about the whole Bible thing all along. Why did she not say something sooner?
And how convenient that her world-changing research, kept in a super-high-security storage room because of its sensitivity and destroyed by Mr Tattooed Nutjob, just happens to have been backed up by Peter on his office computer. Where any old Tom Dick or Harry could have got to it.
And the 20 or so pages of religious lecture at the end? What was the point of that?
And what was the point of the secret redacted file that turned out to be the summary of a discussion thread about a sculpture?
Call me dim but i didn't see the twist - Mr Tattooed Nutjob turning out to be long-dead Zachary - coming. I'd assumed he would turn out to be Peter Solomon's secret love-child or something. I did wonder why Zachary was telling his cellmate all his father's secrets within 24 hours of meeting him.
What a shame Dan Brown couldn't give this book the ending it deserved. i would have said it was a good holiday read if it weren't for the preposterous ending.

[SleighBelleDameSansMerci]

My thoughts EXACTLY. Except that I did get that tattoo nutjob was likely to be Zachary. The book seemed full of endless literary cliches. I did think the end might prove to be the Bible too. The whole thing seemed like a big love letter to Washington DC and is probably v popular in the US!

[MattBellamysMuse]

No-one else got any opinions on this?

[ChickensLoveMarmite]

I was very disappointed by this book. I adored 'DaVinci Code', but it was the first of Brown's novels I had read. Reading the others made it clear that he has a pretty standard formula (like Picoult). I twigged that the tattooed guy was Zachary as soon as he recalled the prison bit. Yawn. It smacked of 'film rights' to me. No doubt a be-mulleted Tom Hanks will be running around Washington next year...

[MattBellamysMuse]