After 2000’s Angels & Demons & the extremely successful Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown returns with another dazzlingly page turner in The Lost Symbol. This is the 3rd novel to feature Brown’s famous character Prof. Robert Langdon. This novel features the theme of god, freemasonry & the seeking of ancient knowledge & power. On its first day the book sold one million in hardcover and e-book versions in the U.S., the UK and Canada, making it the fastest selling adult novel in history.
This movie is set in Washington DC and throws Langdon into the world of freemasonry. Hoaxed into thinking that he is invited apparently from his mentor, a 33rd degreeMason named Peter Solomon, who is the head of the Smithsonian Institution. Solomon is actually abducted by the mysterious Mal’akh, a monster of a man who is obsessed with finding both the Mason’s Pyramid, which Masons believe is hidden somewhere underground in Washington D.C., and the Lost Word, lest Solomon be executed. He believes that Langdon can unlock the source of the power of the ancients.
The CIA & the local police are also involved in the investigation when Solomon’s severed right hand is found on the rotunda of the Capitol, a sign pointing the direction to Langdon. Solomon’s sister Katherine is also in the mix; her leading yet secretive research of Noetic Science is something that also attracts the attention of Mal’akh. Langdo & Katherine are soon captured by Mal’akh who places Robert in a tank of breathable oxygenated liquid, from where Langdon unlocks the code at the Pyramid’s base for Mal’akh, who then flees with Peter Solomon to the Temple Room of the Scottish Rite’s House of the Temple. Langdon and Katherine are eventually rescued by Sato and her staff, who race to the House of the Temple, where Mal’akh threatens to release a heavily edited video showing government officials performing secret Masonic rituals.
Mal’akh turns out to be Solomon’s son, Zachary, long thought to be dead in a Turkish prison and who resents his father for what he believes to be an unfair choice of wealth over wisdom. Zachary then orders Peter to sacrifice him, as he believes that it is his destiny to lead the forces of evil. Director Sato, however, arrives at the Temple in a helicopter, which smashes the Temple’s overhead glass panel, the shards of which fatally impale Zachary. The CIA then thwart Zachary’s plan to transmit the video to several leading media channels. Peter informs Langdon that the word Zachary tattooed on his head is not the Word. Deciding to take Langdon to the true secret behind the Word, Peter leads him to the room atop the Washington Monument, and tells him that the Word lies in the Monument’s cornerstone. Langdon realizes that the symbols that pointed spelled out the words Laus Deo which translate to Praise God, and which imprinted the small, aluminum capstone atop the Monument, which is the true Masonic Pyramid.