Inferno

Dan Brown's most popular hero Robert Langdon wakes up at a hospital in Florence with no memory and with a tampered copy of Botticell's 'Map to Hell'. 

The plot has all the usual elements you would expect out of a Dan Brown Novel. 24 hour deadlines, unsuspected antagonists and Robert Langdon racing in and out of various monumental buildings.

Inferno has Langdon jump through hoops to find out the source of an unknown plague that will change the world we know. With very little information and no recent memories, the hero valiantly ploughs through the unknown with almost no help or support. It is amazing how Dan Brown manages to plant clues in Florentine architectures which makes for a very interesting read. The world of symbols, associations and imagery unfolds slowly to Robert as he seeks the answers he so desperately wants.

After a soaring start, the novel plunges halfway as though the author lost interest in writing. Dialogues are just as witty, there are brilliant nuggets of information, but the novel fails to shine as a whole unit. The reader is just loaded with facts after facts on Florence and the story simply fails to move on. Robert Langdon undergoes that tiresome journey without any light at the end of the tunnel. The author is being unreasonably whimsical by changing heroes to villains and back to being heroes and it is plainly ridiculous to even bother why. The climax doesn't give any sense of completion, nor does it give any closure to the people involved in the story. 

Inferno had the premise of an excellent plot, the most suitable hero already tailored for the plot, highly intellectual background for supporting the plot, but failed with a weak and defensive writing with no end purpose in any sense.

The author should have stuck to his guns with this one!