I'm sure Dan Brown is a very nice man (actually I have no idea if he is but I would hope so), but I have probably just read the last book I will read by him – The Lost Symbol. I think the technical description of my opinion of the book is that it is complete pants.

I'm not sniffy about Dan Brown as many of the critics are, and up until now have enjoyed his books. But this one has a thinner than thin plot, padded out even more than usual with (I suspect) heavily researched material designed to impress the slow of thinking. The conversations were appalling – imagine saying hello to Robert Langdon:

"Hello"

"Hello, now let me see, Hello is a word that originally was invented by devil worshipers for a new pudding they invented in Abyssinia in 1283, it was red, invoked hell and contained jello, hence hell-o. They began to take the pudding to food parties at each other's houses and greeted their brethren with Hell-o again?

"???How are you today?"

"Today in 1194 in what later became Washington DC…."

and so on.

'Facts' embellish good stories, but there needs to be a good story.

Rant out