Product Description

When the NSA's invincible code-breaking machine - encounters a mysterious code it cannot break, the agency calls in its head cryptographer, Susan Fletcher, a brilliant and beautiful mathematician. What she uncovers sends shock waves through the corridors of power. The NSA is being held hostage...not by guns or bombs, but by a code so ingeniously complex that if released it will cripple U.S. intelligence.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4562 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Review
'engaged me instantly, the reader, Bruce Sabbath, keeps up a cracking pace as the mystery deepens and disaster follows disaster.' THE TIMES

Synopsis
When the NSA's invincible code-breaking machine - encounters a mysterious code it cannot break, the agency calls in its head cryptographer, Susan Fletcher, a brilliant and beautiful mathematician. What she uncovers sends shock waves through the corridors of power. The NSA is being held hostage...not by guns or bombs, but by a code so ingeniously complex that if released it will cripple U.S. intelligence.

From the Inside Flap
Before the phenomenal runaway bestseller The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown set his razor-sharp research and storytelling skills to work on the most powerful intelligence organization on earth - the National Security Agency (NSA), an ultra-secret, multibillion-dollar agency many times more powerful than the CIA.

When the NSA’s invincible code-breaking machine encounters a mysterious code it cannot break, the agency calls its head cryptographer, Susan Fletcher, a brilliant and beautiful mathematician. What she uncovers sends shock waves through the corridors of power. The NSA is being held hostage...not by guns or bombs, but by a code so ingeniously complex that if released it would cripple US intelligence.

Caught in an accelerating tempest of secrecy and lies, Susan Fletcher battles to save the agency she believes in. Betrayed on all sides, she finds herself fighting not only for her country but for her life, and, in the end, for the life of the man she loves.

From the underground hallways of power to the skyscrapers of Tokyo to the towering cathedrals of Spain, a desperate race unfolds. It is a battle for survival - a crucial bid to destroy a creation of inconceivable genius...an impregnable code-writing formula that threatens to obliterate the post-cold war balance of power. For ever.

Customer Reviews

Drivel
The one redeeming feature of this book is probably that it made Mr. Brown enough money to pay for some airline tickets so he could actually visit the places he wants to write about. Other than that, this one should have been printed on toilet paper. That way it would at least have served a useful purpose.
Mr. Brown shows he understands the craft of writing books but that is not the same as saying this one is actually worth reading. It took me all of 10 seconds to realize that ndakota was an anagram of tankado and anybody with a smidgen of high school physics knows that uranium has two major isotopes, U235 and U238. This makes me smarter than all the geeks in the NSA crypto department if we were to believe Mr. Brown. Some other things that bothered me were:
1)The murders in the book were totally unneccessary and had no function in furthering the story.
2) The "Mary Poppins" nature of his heroes (practically perfect in every way).
3) The severe lack of realism.
Steer away from this one people. I read it while I was on holiday baking in the South of France with nothing better to do and even then I regretted having put it in my suitcase.

Best book i've ever read!
This was one the best books i've ever read. I could not put it down! Highly recommended.

Cryptography held hostage by unbreakable code.
Digital Fortress

This is Dan Brown's first novel and sets the framework for his mature works, Da Vinci Code etc.

One Saturday brilliant head code breaker Susan Fletcher is called in to work at America's ultimate security code breaking establishment by legendary boss Strathmore. She discovers their top secret three million processor 120 foot high super computer had been stuck for fifteens hours trying to break a code.

The action at the crypto centre accelerates as one disaster follows another and suspicion succeeds suspicion in a real page turning read.

At the same time her boy friend David Becker was flown off to Spain to trace a missing ring, an essential sub plot with fine pace but there are unfortunately too many coincidences for it to be convincing rather than fun.

Essential reading for Dan Brown fans.