Dan Brown plagerises Dan Brown

This week: Sydney / Lake Maquarie / Sydney / Auckland / Sydney.

Finished my third Dan Brown book, Deception Point. What is the Dan Brown Code? Simple:

1. Slighly off-centre, strange yet handsome/beautiful primary character gets thrown into a “situation”.
2. The “situation” has an echo in modern culture conspiracy theories or edge-case science fact
3. The antagonist is the person closest to the primary character, or primary character’s new love-interest
4. Cut chapters just short and leave the characters hanging. Forces the reader to “read on” and not put the book down
5. Weave in some science fiction or myth as the central theme
6. Obviously, the story ends with the primary character “winning” (happy ending) and scoring with their love-interest on the last page.

As a reader of Ludlum, Clancy and other thrillers, Dan Brown is missing some their “meat”. Maybe this is the nature of modern, post cold-war thrillers where the Soviets/China are no longer the central enemy?