Book Review: Deception Point by Dan Brown

Deception Point by Dan Brown

Presidential elections were on the cards.

There was a tension between the current US President and his opposition party candidate Senator Sexton.
The main qualm between the two parties was regarding the space organization NASA. According to Senator Sexton, NASA was wasting billions of dollars of budget on space missions that were resulting in zero zippo zilch that is, in nothing at all. On the flip side, according to the current President Herney, the abolishment or privatization of NASA would result in powerful space secrets and talent going into the hands of private organizations who were driven by advertising.

Senator Sexton brainwashed the public saying that the billions of dollars spent on NASA’s fruitless missions could be utilized on students’ education, corporations and jobs. Whereas, President Herney had no evidence to support his argument. It was evident that Senator Sexton would experience the win in the upcoming election and President Herney, loss. But events unfolded in such a way that left both parties baffled beyond wonderment.
Somewhere in the Milne Ice Shelf, beneath thick layers of glacial Arctic ice, NASA discovered a shiny rock, which upon experimentation was concluded to be a meteorite from another planet. The meteorite contained fossils of giant-sized bugs, hinting the proof of extraterrestial life.
The sudden discovery turned the tables for the aspiring presidential parties. Keeping the discovery a secret, President Herney decided to reveal it in a worldwide video conference. Behind the scenes, he brought into picture an intelligence analyst Rachel Sexton from the national intelligence agency NRO.
Rachel was the daughter of Senator Sexton. She had a conflicting relationship with her father, first because she thought her father was a mysogynist, and second because she worked in an organization that belonged to President Herney’s party and her father despised her for that.
Upon NASA’s meteorite discovery, President Herney secretly called Rachel to confirm the discovery by going to Milne Ice Shelf, seeing the meteorite and then brief his team about the same.
Puzzled, before she could digest all the information, she was taken to the Arctic ice in a private chopper. There she met a scientist, a geologist and a celebrity oceanographer who too like Rachel, were personally hired by the president to test the authenticity of the meteorite. They were certain of the discovery that NASA had indeed discovered a meteorite with the proof of life on other planets. They had prepared a documentary film with the evidences which the President would showcase to the world in his video conference.
There was an abrupt turn of events when Rachel and these scientists discovered illuminating planktons in the water of the pit from where the meteorite was taken out. Upon testing further, they found out that the water was salty, hinting that it was from ocean. The moment they made these discoveries, they got attacked by ice bullets from unknown assailants and got thrown in the depths of the Arctic ocean. Although they got saved by a military submarine, they got bushwacked and tracked by these unknown attackers. Meanwhile, Rachel discovered a stunning deception that sent chills down her spine
She needed to reveal this deception to President Herney but before she could, she got attacked again by the unknown assailants who almost shot her down into the moonlit sea waters where sharks were waiting to devour her.
Once rescued from the deadly sea, almost frozen and terrified by the deceptions unfurled, she reached the press conference where her father Senator Sexton was going to destroy NASA and President Herney by revealing the information about the deceptions. But his blind ambition overthrew him in the pit of his own scandalous past activities including bribery and secret affair with his personal assistant. The flabbergasting deceptions of NASA got revealed to the public but also the shadows behind Senator Sexton. But both the NASA as well as President Herney were innocent bystanders, unaware of the whole game.
Ostensively, the meteorite which NASA had discovered as well as the discovery itself was a big fraud well-fabricated by a mastermind to secure NASA from losing its foothold. It was not even a meteorite but an ocean rock burned by slushhydrogen, made to appear like a meteorite and inserted under the ice shelf manually. But what was even bigger a deception was the person who was the mastermind behind all this plan. He was a person Rachel could never expect in lifetimes. Her boss Bill Pickering, the director of the intelligence organization NRO where she worked as the intelligence gister.
Like most hoodwinkers, Pickering too had his own personal motives and agendas behind being overly protective for NASA, for he wanted to acquire it under his intelligence organization. His deception worked in a way killing many innocents who lost their lives to the bullets of his machine guns and his secret poison-tinted spy cameras and flying microbots including president’s loyal and brainy senior advisor Marjorie Tench.
Like other Dan Brown books, this mystery too is intriguing and tantalizing with endless tunnels of twists between twists. The settings are well-described especially the scenes on the Arctic glacier and the adjoining seas. Concepts and facts are researched in detailing which only adds more allurement to the overall story. Each chapter is a drawing card for the following chapter. The unpredictability of the plot makes the book unputdownable till the very end!

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