Dan Brown’s Fourth C

In Dan Brown’s Masterclass seminar, the creator of the Robert Langdon series discusses what he refers to as the three Cs needed for a successful thriller: the clock, the crucible and the contract. In a thriller, Brown argues, the hero has to resolve a mystery within a certain period of time to avoid catastrophe (clock). The author must place the hero in the utmost danger (crucible) and must provide readers answers to every question raised during the novel (contract).

I had actually been expecting another word beginning with C. It’s the one Brown does best: the chase. In all the Langdon books, the nerdy Harvard prof starts at one point and moves through the novel to a series of other locations, finding clues as he goes. He is always pursued by cops and crooks, who always know his next move but never quite catch him.

It’s easy to make fun of Dan Brown, as Michael Deacon did so hilariously in The Daily Telegraph in 2013. But when he’s on form he is a master at placing his hero in close proximity to danger and never letting up. His 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code made him famous because he wove into the text a theory that Jesus and Mary Magdeline produced descendants, raising questions about the Messiah’s divinity. But the buzz about the Jesus question overshadowed the most important feature of the novel: it’s a rollicking great thriller.

And one reason is the chase.

The Da Vinci Code comprises 107 chapters (including Prologue and Epilogue). The chapters are short, averaging just over four pages each in the hardback edition.

Editors and teachers often encourage writers to restrict the number of points of view, believing that if the reader sees the world through the eyes of too many characters, it can dilute the reader’s association with the central character. But Brown understands that an essential component of a good chase is multiple points of view. The reader has to get inside the minds of both the pursuers and their quarry. The reader has to learn the hero’s plans as the pursuers do, and witness how the pursuers know where the hero is going.

We see the world through the eyes of most of the characters in The Da Vinci Code, starting in the prologue with Jacques Saunière, the Louvre curator who is about to be murdered in the gallery he oversees. The book opens with Robert Langdon being woken in his hotel room by the Paris Judicial Police and being told Saunière is dead.

The scenes focused on Langdon and Sophie Neveu, the police cryptographer who partners with Langdon, form the spine of the novel. Together, they journey through parts of France and Britain in search of the Holy Grail as they try to discover who killed Saunière. This drives the plot forward. But Brown brings in a host of other strong characters in hot pursuit of Sophie and Langdon, and it is the multi-party chase that creates Brown’s crucible.

By Chapter 8, we know that the respected police captain Bezu Fache suspects Langdon of the murder and has him secured in the Louvre. Eight chapters later, Sophie and Langdon are planning to escape from the Louvre to reach sanctuary at the U.S. Embassy. Two chapters later, Fache and his underlings learn that Sophie and Langdon have given them the slip.

Meanwhile, the gigantic albino monk named Silas, murderer of Saunière, is on his own mission through Paris to find the “keystone”, which can lead to the Grail. Answering to a mysterious master criminal called the Teacher, Silas is soon also on the trail of Langdon and Sophie.

As Sophie and Langdon scurry to a succession of romantic locales, Fache and/or Silas learn of their destination and are hot on their heels before the duo even arrive.

Midway through the story, Langdon and Sophie commandeer an armored truck from a private bank to drive to the French villa of Sir Leigh Teabing, a wealthy scholar who may be able to shed light on the secrets of the Grail. Fache pressures the bank management, which activates a tracking device on the armored truck and gives the French police the fugitives’ precise location.

Meanwhile, the Teacher has also informed Silas that the duo is headed for Sir Leigh’s villa. So, as Sir Leigh reveals the secrets of the Holy Grail to an unsuspecting Sophie, Silas and the cops are all descending on the villa.

Brown can be inconsistent in stringing a thriller out of symbology and religious history but he’s usually tremendous in structuring a story around a chase.

In Angels and Demons, the first Robert Langdon novel, Brown focused more on the clock than the chase. Yes, Langdon and his European paramour (he gets a new one for each book) move through Rome, but the big source of tension is they only have twenty-four hours until there’s a massive anti-matter explosion under Vatican City.

In the more recent novels, the chase has been as much a part of a Dan Brown novel as a twisted multi-billionaire with an unworldly knowledge of western art. In Inferno, Langdon and an Italian doctor dash through Florence and Venice, evading an assassin called Vayentha as well as the military and Florentine Carabinieri. Same goes for Origin. Langdon and museum curator Ambra Vidal are chased by the police and a retired Spanish admiral called Luis Ávila as they scour Bilboa and Barcelona for the origin and future of life. (They would have been better off searching for an editor. The book badly needed one.)

I’m a huge fan of Dan Brown’s ability to ramp up the tension in his novels by the effective use of the chase. It’s not an easy skill to master. I know because I’ve used the chase in a few of my own books, including A Hitman on Haight Street and the novel I’m currently writing. It’s a difficult device because the novelist has to create predators following the hero(s), and make them credible enough that the danger seems real. While the hero(s) unravel the central mystery, the pursuers have to keep receiving clues on where their quarry is headed. All the while, the author has to reveal the details of the mystery, and flesh out the book’s central characters. All has to be done with proper pacing, as illustrated by Brown in The Da Vinci Code and Inferno.

I recently reread The Da Vinci Code to study how Brown uses chases so effectively. The analysis helped me with my work-in-progress The Presidio Biotech. In my new book, a team of biometric engineers working in the Presidio, the park near Golden Gate Bridge, can’t raise venture capital for their business so they design a product that’s useful only to criminals. They then discover criminals are willing to kill for it. Cops and crooks chase my poor heroes throughout San Francisco and Marin County, always on their heels in a way that – I hope – escalates the tension.

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