Deception Point by Dan Brown was a thrilling book.  Although it was long, it flowed very well.  There were a lot of chapters, many of which were cliff hangers, and rarely was a chapter repetitive. I couldn’t put the book down  with all of its plot twists.  Almost every chapter contained was a crucial event.  “Its like the stock exchange on speed.”  One thing I did not like was the lack of descriptions.  There were new characters introduced in every chapter with little description or information about the character.  Also, some of the characters were unrealistic.  For example at one point three of the main characters were stuck on a glacier and one of the people on the glacier was a television marine documentary host and happened to just have done a special on glaciers and knew exactly what to do.  The thing I enjoyed most about this book was the technology.  I found the discussions of the Mach III jets and micro-robots fascinating.  When I realized that many of the organizations and technologies described in this book were real I became more impressed. The author must have done a lot of research to find out about all of the technology.

 The main plot of the story is the political race between Senator Sexton and the current President, Zach Hearney.  NASA is the key issue.  Senator Sexton is strongly against NASA due to its lack of recent discoveries.  President Hearney is an advocate of NASA.  Senator Sexton is winning the race for president but during the campaign  NASA discovers a meteorite in the Milne ice shelf.  The meteorite contains fossils.  President Hearney schedules a press conference to announce the discovery which boosts his campaign.

 Marjorie Tench, the presidents assistant, calls Gabriella Asch (Sexton’s assistant) and tells her that she knows about the affair she had with the president.  Marjorie shows her pictures taken by a micro robot.  She tells Gabrielle that the president called an urgent  press conference for later that night at which time he will announce the affair.  She says that if Gabrielle will say the affair happened that they will spare her and only hurt Sexton.  Marjorie says Gabrielle has one hour to decide what to do.

Gabrielle decides not to admit to the affair.  This is a good decision because the press conference is actually about NASA’s discovery, not the affair.    By deciding not to admit the affair she saved herself from the public humiliation.  The public would find out about NASA discovery no matter what she did, so the campaign would take a big hit.  This way though, Gabrielle and Sexton’s morals would still be good standing in the eyes of the public, only their ideas about abolishing NASA would be scrutinized.  This is still bad for the campaign, but not nearly as bad a scandal of an affair.