The Dan Brown formula

Cloudy.Stuffy.27C

Start with:
a secret society/institution or highly confidential project
> a villain, usually some kind of mind-twisted person who likes inflicting pain to himself, infiltrating that society
> the secret society/project is going to bring irreversible change (usually positive) to the world
> villain tries to suppress the revelation by destroying the knowledge or sabotaging the research
> murder or mutilation of some sort occurs to the person in the secret society/involved in the project
> Robert Langdon gets called in (well, at least for his series) or involved somehow
> a female protagonist related to the deceased/injured appears. Usually young (well, not teens-kind-of-young), beautiful, intelligent and holds some important status in the science world
> a very stupid, but loyal (?) and stubborn, cop / security related person will usually get in the way, but proves himself to be helpful in the end. um... there might be a mole in the police force...
> villain threatens Langdon to help or he will render further horrors
> Langdon starts adventure with the female main character to find the truth of what is behind all this, while resisting the threat and saving the world (?)
> the adventure usually tours around some historical great city (cities)
> lots of symbols, secrets of the ancient worlds and societies, anecdotes (?) involved
> truth will be found; the right will be restored; further killings are prevented except for the villain's, and usually the black hand controlling the whole series of events is someone close to Langdon / related to the society, and thought-to-be unexpected
> secrets will be revealed to Langdon (and of course to the readers) but not to the rest of the world (those living in the book)

Yeah yeah, I'm late to read the The Lost Symbol (the book's been out like for 2 years now, but so what? :P) I haven't run into any book reviews/discussion (or maybe I've been subconsciously avoiding them) so I suppose it'll be following the same route, except that from my skimming through the pages so far, there's no young and pretty female character this time. I have to admit that Brown's way of laying out the story is much more enticing but reading the same story-flow for the fifth time makes it a bit, too, predictable. (I know, the context, historical background is all different, but still...) The only thing I hate though, is the parallel plots have to be separated every chapter (say, chapter 10 talks about plot A, ends with something really mind boggling, but chapter 11 has to go back to plot B which could be totally bland at that point in time.) I guess it's his way of making you read faster?

Let's see how quickly I'll finish this one as compared to my glorious "battle" against The Historian.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock.