Inferno / Dan Brown

Whatever suspense the David Lagercrantz book I read lacked, this one more than made up for. But that’s what Dan Brown has always exceled at – the breathless day and night chase where no one seems to need to sleep very much, eat, or use the restroom, a sort of mash-up of the Amazing Race, the television show 24, with a dash of Rick Steves.

This time the action begins in the art city of Florence. It’s a wonderful tour of the historic and cultural sites, and lets the reader explore secret passageways and pass through hidden doors that seem to honeycomb every building that Robert Langdon enters. (Particularly fascinating is the Vasari corridor in Florence that snakes its way from the Pitti Palace across the Ponte Vecchio, around the Uffizi, to the Palazzo Vecchio, a relatively unknown passageway that secrets Robert across the river, one which I remember from our visits).

Anyway, Inferno takes its title from Dante’s poem and Brown shows us all the main sights in Dante’s Florence. No less interesting is the brief stop in Venice and the final rendezvous in Istanbul, a city that I one day hope to visit. Overlayed on the art history tour is a theme of human overpopulation and ecological collapse. It’s a clever plot, but perhaps a bit too intricate. Nonetheless Inferno is an entertaining read.

Lately I’ve been sort of appalled by how much e-books have increased in price. I found Inferno on Overdrive at the library and downloaded it for free! I always intended to do that more often, but sometimes I can’t bear the wait for things that I want to read now, and sometimes the wait is months and months for titles that are in high demand.

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