This summer I caught up with my fictional man crush Monday, Robert Langdon, as he ran around Florence with Dante’s death mask. What’s not to like? He’s smart, a swimmer, likeable (portrayed accurately by Tom Hanks) and, in my mind, he is beyond super gorgeous (portrayed accurately by Tom Hanks).

A lot of craziness happens in this book – The Girl From a Dragon Tattoo made an appearance and so did a mad scientist. And there is no shortage of Dan Brown epic turns and twists. Enough to make you feel dizzy! A sure tell sign you have landed yourself in Dan Brown book: A character is dying, who just so happens to also be the sole possessor of a crucial piece of knowledge. Rather than using the last minutes of his life to scribble, “The [IMPORTANT OBJECT] is in the [SPECIFIC LOCATION]” on a crumpled napkin or wrinkled receipt (nobody is being picky here), he uses his brain all too effectively in dying moments  to devise a scavenger hunt through a foreign city.Totally normal, nbd.

Reading Dan Brown you actually feel like you are running through the wonders of a beautiful, historic city without the costs and risks associated, such as getting infected with some deathly plague. Unless it’s national and then you feel screwed. There is just a realistic aspect to everything Brown writes, and that is true for Inferno’s case as well. Nothing short of details – maybe too many details in Inferno’s case. As a side, and a very serious note, how does Dan Brown come up with this stuff? I envy his creative mind.

For those who want to travel to Florence with a pit stop in Turkey and all the while catch up on Dante literature, I highly recommend this book with the official BATP ranking of:

Happy traveling reading,

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