Dan Brown's Inferno

Good news for Florence in Northern Italy! A new Dan Brown book has hit the bookstores and it's all about local boy Dante Alighieri. No, he's not an overpaid soccer-player but an early 14th century writer.  Check him out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Alighieri.

You already know Dan Brown, of course; he's the guy who got rich writing an appallingly bad book called The Da Vinci Code.  So, has he learned anything?  Is the new book, Inferno, going to be any better?  I haven't read it myself -- I'm waiting for them to start arriving in bulk at my local charity bookshop. But the early reviews both sides of the Atlantic don't look good.  Here are a few samples.

"The new novel is probably the closest Brown will ever get to his version of The Hangover: Langdon wakes up in a Florence hospital with a bad case of retrograde amnesia after a gunshot head wound and a strange object connected to Dante's Inferno." Brian Truitt, USA Today

 "Narration appears lifted from a Fodor's guide, as when Langdon pauses in the middle of a life-or-death escape to remember the history of a bridge: 'Today the vendors are mostly goldsmiths and jewelers, but that has not always been the case. Originally the bridge had been home to Florence's vast, open-air market, but the butchers were banished in 1593.' It's like trying to solve a mystery while one of those self-guided tour headsets is dangling from your ears." Monica Hesse, Washington Post

"As a stylist Brown gets better and better: where once he was abysmal he is now just very poor. His prose, for all its detailing of brand names and the exact heights of buildings, is characterised by imprecision. It works to prevent the reader from engaging with the story ... But in the end this is his worst book, and for a sad, even noble, reason – his ambition here wildly exceeds his ability." Jake Kerridge, The Daily Telegraph

Jack Kerridge has it dead right. In the preface to The Da Vinci Code Brown gave credit for the research to his wife. That, in my opinion, could be grounds for divorce. But the problem is not with the stuff he makes up, it's with the stuff he doesn't need to make up. It's the job of fiction writers to invent reality. But every time he makes a simple mistake of inconsequential fact he torpedoes the reader's carefully suspended disbelief.  In one four-page passage of DVC (the chase across Paris) he makes seven basic mistakes.  For example, Europol does not operate marked police cars with flashing lights and sirens in the French capital.  Nor any other European capital for that matter.  [Easy to check: https://www.europol.europa.eu/.]

Dan Brown is an achingly bad writer. His editors at Doubleday should be ashamed of themselves. These are all problems good editing can fix. Maybe Doubleday doesn't have any good editors with some professional pride? Maybe they are just happy to bank the proceeds from selling this crap?

Batman/Colorado (2)

More on the "10 key points of evidence that point to a conspiracy in the Batman/Colorado shooting" from http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread864644/pg1.

Key point 6 (OK, I'm doing them out of order) says this:

Holmes booby trapped apartment - How are we to believe that a 24 yr old, former jewish camp counselor, gaming nerd, science rock star, Neuroscience PHD had the skill set to set up a system of explosive devices and booby traps that would have the FBI bewildered for almost two days?? How are we to believe that ?? There is no way this maze of death was the work of one neuroscience student. It's BS.

No, it's not bullshit. If the poster of this thought for a few seconds he'd have realised the crass stupidity of what he was saying. In the first sentence he establishes that James Holmes was a "science rock star" and a "neuroscience PhD" student but claims that he didn't have enough brains to improvise an explosive device. As any ill-educated Taliban fighter could tell you, making IEDs is not that complicated.

As a 24-year-old "gaming nerd" it's pretty safe to assume he knows how to Google something like "How do I make a bomb?" to get some instructions. Copies of the Anarchist's Cookbook are up there somewhere. Even the murderous clowns who bombed the Boston Marathon managed to make devices that actually exploded.

The FBI (if it was the FBI rather than the ATF) was dead right to take two days getting into the apartment. What was the rush, for fuck's sake? You take your time. You drill holes and insert fiber-optic cameras. You use the resulting photos and architect's plans to figure out how the booby-trap is rigged and how it needs to be made safe. That's not being "bewildered", that's being smart. And staying alive.

The 1st Law of UFOlogy

Don Craig's 1st Law of Ufology goes like this:

"The sharper the photograph or video, the more likely it is to be a fake."

The rider to this is as follows: "If you can see windows and/or landing gear it is definitely a fake!"

But stay optimistic! The last ten years has seen the widespread introduction of high-resolution digital cameras -- including those in cell-phones. Now there's really no excuse for getting convincing sharp images of the same object from many angles.  Is there?

Burning Cars 9/11

The National Press Club, Washington DC, a few years ago.

I'm the only Brit sitting with a bunch of American journalists having a few drinks late one Saturday afternoon.  I'm on my second JD and listening to the others, wondering what hot topics they were going to cover.  It wasn't long before they moved off the latest sex scandals of Capitol Hill and onto the Great 9/11 Conspiracy; not the brilliantly executed al-Qaeda terror plot, of course, but the one perpetrated by the US Government.

I said nothing, happy to look and learn, but I couldn't hide behind my shot glass forever.  "Hey, Don!  What do you think?"  They were buying the drinks which obliged me to perform.  "I think al-Qaeda did it."

Jaws dropped, they gasped and stared at me as though I'd suggested the founding fathers used to eat their children.  Eventually one of them said, "If it was just the AQ operatives in the planes, how did they manage to set fire simultaneously to so many cars throughout New York City?"

Jesus, was that the best they could do?  Remember, all these guys were journalists, some even claiming to be investigative journalists.  I wasn't in a position to spout statistics at them, but I have learned more talking to cops than I have to hacks.

Was is the most common reason in large western cities for the spontaneous combustion of the automobile?  In some places it is the attempt by criminals to destroy trace evidence in vehicles.  The cars might be stolen or there might be a body in the trunk.  In other places, the No 1 cause is the guy who wants to replace his old clunker with the shiny new model, courtesy of his insurance company.

But how does that explain a high incidence of car torching in Manhattan on 9/11?  Well, think about it.  Armageddon strikes the southern end of your city; what better opportunity to get rid of the rust bucket parked outside your front door?  "I looked outa the window and saw this jet engine land on my Buick!" you tell the insurance investigator.  "So where's the jet engine now?" he wants to know.  "Men in black came and took it away on a helicopter."

Upload: A Very American Conspiracy

My thriller Upload: A Very American Conspiracy is now available on Smashwords at http://smashwords.com/b/313978. Within days of this post it will also become downloadable from Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony Reader Store, Kobo, the Diesel eBook Store, Baker & Taylor's Blio and Axis360.  A page-turning 100,000 words for a meagre $2.99!  A thriller and a textbook of conspiracy investigation in one volume.  Buy it now before they sell out...  (I'll provide more links as they become available.)

Thoughts on the JFK assassination (2) and Batman/Colorado (1)

Shortly after posting my first thoughts on this subject I came across this post at the Above Top Secret blog: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread864644/pg1.  It was the title that caught my attention: "10 key points of evidence that point to a conspiracy in the Batman/Colorado shooting".

Most of the "points" aren't evidence at all and the ones that are, don't point to any kind of conspiracy.  Saying that witnesses didn't agree with each other or with the police, is something that can be said of most criminal incidents.  It's something that annoys investigators and fascinates psychologists: eye-witnesses are not reliable.

Saying there's no papertrail for the perpetrator's purchase of the weapons used presumes that the police has no papertrail.  More likely, there is a documentary trail of the purchase, but the police haven't shared it with the media (or this blogger) yet.  And why should they?  It will be used in court.

In another instance, the blogger finds it sinister that one of the witnesses gave an accurate description of the alleged gunman.  After the shooting, she was found face-down on the floor -- so how could she have seen him?  Well, how about she saw his face, saw his gun -- and ducked?!  Later posts deal with all 10 points without straining too many brain-cells.

It's a classic case of wanting a conspiracy and then desperately trying to find something to support the idea.

Thoughts on the JFK assassination (1)

November 22nd, 1963.  I can remember quite clearly where I was when news of the murder of President Kennedy reached Britain.  I was in a small print-shop in South London proof-reading a galley hot off the wonderful Lino-type machine.  Through the clanking of the Heidelberg press, the stitcher and the guillotine I could just about hear the radio.

My attention was drawn to the fact that the BBC suddenly stopped the music and a sonorous voice said: “We interrupt this programme…”  Then something about a shooting in Dallas, Texas and, “President Kennedy is dead.”  It was late-enough in the day for the killing of police officer J D Tippit to be reported.  And the fact that a man had been arrested.

After all this time I don’t recall how long it was before the conspiracy theories started; without the web, there had to be a time-lag!  Within a week of the assassination opinion polls reported that some 52% of Americans believed Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone.

Less than a year later, in September 1964, 55.5% agreed with the findings of the Warren Commission that he did act alone.  But that left over 30% firmly sticking to the conspiracy theory.  And I agreed with them.

I devoured Mark Lane’s 1966 book Rush to Judgement and engrossed myself in Oswald’s biography, the mystery of the Magic Bullet and the shooter on the grassy knoll.  But by the time I watched Oliver Stone’s JFK I found it difficult not to laugh out loud.  Even the talents of such a fine film-maker could not disguise the fact that the conspiracy theory was all bollocks.

So, what went wrong?

Well, there wasn’t a blinding flash in the night.  I wasn’t handed a suitcase stuffed full of $100 bills in a deserted parking structure.  (I wish!)  It was more a gradual process.  I stopped trying to use what was known about the assassination before, during and after the events in Dealey Plaza on November 22nd, 1993 to prove a pre-existing theory.  Instead, I took each piece of evidence in turn and examined it – as far as I could – down to a molecular level.

A few years ago, a close friend and colleague, said to me, “What about the Magic Bullet, then?”  Well, what about it?  The Magic Bullet – or Single Bullet – theory proposes that a bullet passing through the President’s neck from behind and angled from right to left could not possibly have been the same bullet that struck Governor Connally in the right shoulder.  Unless it magically changed direction in its flight between the two men.

Of course, even if the bullet had been made by Harry Potter, that in itself does not prove that President Kennedy was assassinated by the Mafia.  Or the Cubans.  Or whoever.

The answer turns out to be simple.  Most people think of a sedan travelling down a city street, two people in the front, two in the back, more-or-less at the same height.  But that wasn’t the case with the presidential limousine.  There were six people on board.  Up front were two Secret Service agents.  In the back were the President and Mrs Kennedy.  Between them, Governor and Mrs Connally were sitting on what are called “jump seats”.  Consequently, the governor was not in line and at the same height as the president; Connally was sitting lower and more inboard and when those adjustments are made, the path of the “Magic” bullet turns out to be dead straight and true.

This web page does a pretty thorough job of laying out the evidence.  But, given that it’s relatively easy to discount this theory, one has to ask why it ever became a “theory” in the first place.  Essentially, it shows the danger of starting out with a mind-set and then going out to dig up all the anomalies – or apparent anomalies – that might go some way towards proving it.

This is the difference between faith-based journalism and fact-based journalism.  More on this in subsequent posts.