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Inferno (Brown novel)

Inferno AuthorDan BrownCountryUnited StatesUnited KingdomLanguageEnglishSeriesRobert Langdon #4GenreMystery , Conspiracy fiction, ThrillerPublisherDoubledayMay 14, 2013Media typePrint, e-book, moviePages642 pagesISBN978-0-385-53785-8OCLC824723329Preceded byThe Lost Symbol Followed byOrigin
Inferno is a 2013 mystery thriller novel by American author Dan Brown and the fourth book in his Robert Langdon series, following Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol. The book was published on May 14, 2013, ten years after publication of The Da Vinci Code (2003), by Doubleday. It was number one on the New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction and Combined Print & E-book fiction for the first eleven weeks of its release, and also remained on the list of E-book fiction for the first seventeen weeks of its release. A film adaptation was released in the United States on October 28, 2016.

Plot
Harvard symbolism professor Robert Langdon wakes up in a hospital in Florence, Italy with a head wound and no memory of the last few days. Dr. Sienna Brooks, one of the doctors tending to him, reveals that he is suffering from amnesia and hearing a woman's voice repeatedly saying "seek and find". When Vayentha, an assassin, shows up in the hospital and kills one of the doctors, while attempting to kill Langdon, Brooks helps Langdon escape, and they flee to her apartment. Meanwhile Ferris plays recorded tape, Langdon saying "Ve . . . sorry. Ve . . . sorry".

Langdon finds a cylinder with a biohazard sign in his jacket and decides to call the U.S. consulate. He learns that they are searching for him, but, prompted by Brooks, claims to be across the street from her apartment, to avoid getting her more involved. Soon, Langdon sees Vayentha pull up to the location he gave the consulate, deducing that the U.S. government wants to kill him. Langdon opens the container and finds a small medieval bone cylinder fitted with a hi-tech projector (Faraday Pointer) that displays a modified version of Botticelli's Map of Hell, which is based on Dante's Inferno. A trail of clues leads them toward the Old City.

The Palazzo Vecchio in Florence
He goes there with Brooks, but they find that a secretive team of soldiers, and the Florentine Carabinieri searching for them. They flee, and Langdon examines the "Map of Hell" again, noticing several changes to the layers. Langdon discovers an anagram, 'Catrovacer'. They manage to evade the soldiers and get into the Palazzo Vecchio using the Vasari Corridor. They searched the code in the painting The Battle of Marciano by Vasari, located in the 'Hall of the Five Hundred'.

At the Palazzo, Langdon meets the director of the museum, Marta Alvarez, who recognizes him, having met him and Ignazio Busoni, the director of Il Duomo, the previous night, when she showed them Dante's death mask. Langdon asks to see the mask again, to retrace his steps, but they find the mask gone, and security footage shows Langdon and Busoni stealing the mask. Fleeing, Langdon and Sienna listen to a message left by Busoni, referring to "Paradise 25".Vayentha injures Ferris with the squib breaking his ribs.

Gates of Paradise at Florence Baptistry
Langdon and Brooks escape the guards, but the soldiers arrive, and chase them across the attic. Vayentha also arrives, and in a confrontation with Langdon, Brooks pushes her to her death. Langdon connects the phrase "Paradise 25" to the Florence Baptistry, where they find the Dante mask along with a riddle from its current owner, a billionaire geneticist named Bertrand Zobrist. Brooks explains that Zobrist was a geneticist who advocated the halting of humanity's growth, and that he was rumored to be working on an engineered disease to do so. Ferris helps them escape the soldiers. They follow the riddle to Venice. Brooks punches Ferris in his damaged ribs, with Brooks claiming he is suffering from massive internal bleeding, causing Langdon to suspect Ferris has been infected with Zobrist's plague. Langdon is captured by a group of soldiers while Brooks escapes.

Langdon is taken to Dr. Elizabeth Sinskey, the director-general of the WHO. She explains that Zobrist, who committed suicide the week before, had supposedly developed a new biological plague that will cause infertility in a third of the worlds' population, in order to solve the problem of the world's impending overpopulation, citing the Doomsday Argument. Sinskey raided Zobrist's safe deposit box, found the cylinder and flew Langdon to Florence to follow the clues. However, he stopped communicating with Sinskey after meeting with Alvarez and Ignazio and the WHO feared he betrayed them and was working with Zobrist. The soldiers were the WHO's emergency response team, and not meant to kill him.

Zobrist had paid a shadowy consulting group "The Consortium" to protect the cylinder until a certain date. He also left a video filled with disturbing Dante imagery, and then showed a picture of the plague itself, kept in a hidden underwater location, within a slowly dissolving bag. The video claims that the world will be changed the following morning. When Sinskey retrieved it, the Consortium abducted Langdon and staged every event up to this point, to motivate him to solve it.

Tomb of Enrico Dandolo, at the Hagia Sophia
Brooks goes rogue and The Consortium realizes she was a secret supporter and lover of Zobrist. She learned where the plague was being kept after Langdon extracting the text from Dor�'s illustration 'Dandolo Preaching the Crusade' at St.Mark's Basilica and acquires a private jet to get to the Plague. Langdon, the WHO and The Consortium team up to stop her. After watching Zobrist's video, they conclude that the bag containing the plague will be fully dissolved by the date the video specifies and that Zobrist's clues point to its location: the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. They find the plague is in the Cistern but discover Brooks already there. The bag that held the plague had already been broken, presumably spreading to the outer world via visiting tourists. Brooks runs out of the Cistern, causing panicked tourists to stampede, while Langdon gives chase.

Inside Basilica Cistern, with water below and tourists above
Despite almost escaping, Brooks returns, and reveals that the bag had already dissolved one week earlier. The date specified in Zobrist's video was the mathematical calculation of when the entire world would be infected, which has already happened. The plague that Zobrist created is revealed to be a vector virus that randomly activates to employ DNA modification to cause sterility in one third of humans. Brooks reveals that she was trying to stop the virus herself, distrusting the WHO, fearing the virus would be weaponized if they found it. The leader of The Consortium tries to escape WHO custody, but is caught later. Brooks receives amnesty in exchange for working with the WHO to address the crisis, since she has extensive knowledge of Zobrist's research and work.

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