Digital Fortress by Dan Brown is a tech heavy thriller published in 1998 St. Martin’s Press. The book centers around a super computer called TRANSLTR. TRANSLTR owned and invented by The National Security Agency is a code-breaking supercomputer written to decrypt computer algorithms and codes.

Commander Trevor Strathmore calls in head cryptographer Susan Fletcher a brilliant and beautiful mathematician to work on an unbreakable algorithm written by former employee Ensei Tankado who was let go on bad terms. Meanwhile Susan Fletcher’s boyfriend is set on a chase to find a ring that has the key to the unbreakable algorithm which was given away before Ensei Tankado death.

The book is pretty intense and keeps your interest most of the times being a tech person I found it interesting as they really get into the nuts and bolts of computer security, digital signatures, code breaking and mathematics. Despite the characters being all over the world and all the technical information the book is really easy to read and follow.

I am not a huge fan of Dan Brown’s books but the story was great and at times he made it entertaining. It’s hard to make someone sitting at a workstation and programming a computer engaging in book format but Dan Brown does a good job. I gave the book 2 stars only because I do feel the book was well written and entertaining but I found the ending very far fetched. The book was great till the ending and then that’s where I feel it fell apart for me as a reader. Still a good book and worth a read despite being a little dated.