Deception Point

Deception Point was published in 2001 and is Dan Brown's third novel, arriving two years before The Da Vinci Code made him one of the best-selling authors in the world and sent his earlier books back onto the lists. The novel belongs to the science-and-politics category of thriller that Brown had been writing: a single technical claim with enormous political consequences, a small group of experts sent to check it, and a deadline measured in days rather than weeks.

The discovery at the centre of the book is modelled on the ALH84001 meteorite, the Martian rock that American researchers announced in 1996 contained possible evidence of ancient microbial life. In Brown's version the find lands during a presidential campaign, which means the science is immediately converted into a campaign argument: NASA needs the credit, the incumbent needs the news, and the challenger needs the announcement to be wrong. Rachel's position is awkward by design, since her father is the challenger and the agency she works for serves his opponent.

The novel moves between Washington, an ice island in the Arctic and a research vessel, and the middle section is largely a chase across and into the ice. Brown's later books are faster and more compressed, and this one carries more of the technical apparatus than his readers may expect, including a fair amount about how a meteorite would have to have arrived and what the evidence around it would look like. It is a standalone, and it sits with the political and scientific thrillers rather than with the Robert Langdon novels.