Released on September 15, 2009, it is the third Brown novel to involve the character of Harvard University symbologist Robert Langdon, following 2000’s Angels & Demons and 2003’s The Da Vinci Code. It had a first printing of 6.5 million (5 million in North America, 1.5 million in the UK), the largest in Doubleday history. On its first day the book sold one million in hardcover and e-book versions in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada, making it the fastest selling adult novel in history. By September 25 the book topped the New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction.

The story takes place over a period of 12 hours in Washington, D.C., with a focus on Freemasonry. Robert Langdon is summoned to give a lecture in National Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol, with the invitation apparently from his mentor, a 33rd degree Mason named Peter Solomon, who is the head of the Smithsonian Institution. However instead of an audience for his lecture, Langdon finds the severed right hand of Peter Solomon tattooed into a Hand of the Mysteries and pointing to the fresco The Apotheosis of Washington on the inside of the Capitol dome.

Mal’akh, a brilliant, tattooed villain who is in search of an ancient source of power has taken Peter hostage and demands Langdon unlock the Ancient Mysteries in return for Peter’s life. In a fiery nighttime explosion, Mal’akh also destroys the Smithonsonian-sponsored laboratory of Dr. Katherine Solomon, Peter’s younger sister, where she conducted successful experiments in the ability of the human mind to affect subatomic particles. In addition, the CIA is pursuing Mal’akh in the interests of National Security.

Characters

Robert Langdon, Harvard symbologist

Mal’akh, tattooed and brilliant villain

Peter Solomon, Smithsonian secretary, billionaire, and Freemason

Katherine Solomon, noetic scientist

Trish Dunne, Katherine Solomon’s assistant, and 2nd female victim of Mal’akh

Mark Zoubianis, hacker and friend of Trish

Warren Bellamy, Architect of the capitol, and Freemason

Inoue Sato, diminutive woman who is Director of CIA’s Office of Security

Nola Kaye, CIA analyst

Rick Parrish, CIA security specialist

Turner Simkins, CIA field operations leader

Reverend Colin Galloway, dean of the Washington Cathedral, and Freemason

Trent Anderson, Capitol police chief

Alfonso Nuñez, Capitol security guard

Jonas Faukman, New York editor

Omar Amirana, DC cab driver

Development

The book had been in development for several years; originally expected in 2006, the projected publication date was pushed back multiple times. The book was published on September 15, 2009 with an initial print run between 5 and 6.5 million copies, the largest first printing in publisher Random House’s history. Electronic versions such as eBook and Audible book versions were also made available on the same date.

Sales

The Lost Symbol broke sales records, becoming the fastest selling adult-market novel in history, with over one million copies sold on the first day of release. By the end of the first week, a total of two million copies had been sold in the U.S., Canada, and UK. The hardcopy book was on pre-order lists for months leading up to its release, being heavily ordered both in the United States and Canada. According to the publisher, on its first day the book sold 1 million in hardcover and e-book versions in the U.S., the UK and Canada, prompting the printing of an additional 600,000 hardcover copies to the 5 million initially printed.

On its first day the book became the #1 bestseller in amazon.com, and the Amazon Kindle e-reader edition became the top-selling item on Amazon.com, outselling Amazon’s sales of the hardback copy of the novel, which is the sixth best selling book of 2009 on pre-publication orders alone. The Lost Symbol also ranked as the #1 bestseller in Amazon’s Canadian and British sites. Both Barnes & Noble and Waterstone’s reported the book has broken all previous records for adult fiction in the United Kingdom. According to Nielsen BookScan data, 550,946 copies of The Lost Symbol were sold in its first week of sale, taking £4.6 million. By the end of the second sales week, Transworld intends to have 1.25 million copies printed. By September 25 the book ranked #1 in the New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction.

Reception

The New York Times praised the book as being “impossible to put down” and claimed Brown is “bringing sexy back to a genre that had been left for dead”. Nevertheless, it noted the overuse of certain phrases and italics, as well as the lack of logic behind characters’ motivations. It also likened one of the characters to Jar Jar Binks.

Los Angeles Times said, “Brown’s narrative moves rapidly, except for those clunky moments when people sound like encyclopedias.”

Newsweek called the book “contrived”, saying that to get through The Lost Symbol, just like The Da Vinci Code, it was necessary to swallow a lot of coincidences, but the book was still a page-turner, and that Brown “is a maze maker who builds a puzzle and then walks you through it. His genius lies in uncovering odd facts and suppressed history, stirring them together into a complicated stew and then saying, what if?”

The National Post’s review called it a “heavy-handed, clumsy thriller” and that the character of the villain (Mal’akh) “bears an uncomfortably close similarity” to the Francis Dolarhyde character in Thomas Harris’ 1981 novel Red Dragon.

TIME said the plot was fun, if bruising, but “It would be irresponsible not to point out that the general feel, if not all the specifics, of Brown’s cultural history is entirely correct. He loves showing us places where our carefully tended cultural boundaries — between Christian and pagan, sacred and secular, ancient and modern — are actually extraordinarily messy.”

Novelist William Sutcliffe’s review in the Financial Times panned the book as “a novel that asks nothing of the reader, and gives the reader nothing back”, adding that it “is filled with cliché, bombast, undigested research and pseudo-intellectual codswallop”. The digested read by John Crace in The Guardian ends with Robert Langdon begging Dan Brown “Please don’t wheel me out again.”