Brown, Dan: Deception Point

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Intelligence analyst Rachel Sexton, an employee of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), is used to absorbing complex data and repackaging it into digestible bits for consumption by the likes of Zach Herney, the President of the United States. As it happens, Rachel is also the estranged daughter of Democratic senator and presidential candidate Sedgewick Sexton, who is running against the incumbent on an anti-NASA platform. When NASA makes a (conveniently-timed) discovery of unparalleled importance deep in the Arctic circle, inside a three-hundred-foot-thick ice floe on the coast of Ellesmere Island, President Herney shrewdly recruits Rachel to corroborate the find and summarize the science behind it for his staff. Rachel's involvement in the project, however, which requires observation of the find in situ, plunges her into a nightmarish race for survival after she and a small band of civilian scientists stumble upon certain irregularities in NASA's evidence.

Deception Point is yet another taut, intelligent thriller from the keyboard of Dan Brown, who, like his protagonist, excels at transforming complex information into digestible prose. This is top-notch escapist fiction. Put it on your summer reading list.