Masons: The Reluctant Text Symbols Their Us Counterparts Are the Good Guys in Dan Brown's Latest Novel, Thrusting Scotland's Most Famous Secret Society Into the Limelight

Summary

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THE Freemasons held their fraternal breath as midnight approached last Monday. After centuries of dwelling in history's shadows - being blamed for everything from assassinating JFK and establishing a New World Order to the Jack the Ripper murders and controlling the police force - the organisation waited anxiously for Dan Brown's new book, The Lost Symbol, to appear in bookstores at the stroke of 12, dragging the secret society into the glare of a 21stcentury media feeding frenzy.

Brown's most famous literary offering, TheDaVinci Code, threw harsh light on another secretive society - the Catholic Church's Opus Dei - causing serious PR problems for the organisation in real life.Would Brown's creation, symbologist Robert Langdon's latest adventure, follow suit, portraying the Masons as history's conspiratorial bogeymen? But a most unexpected thing happened: despite his tS rademark tortured prose, inexplicable use of italics, starchy exposition and plot twists borrowed from a Latin American soap opera, Brown may have pulled off something of a PR coup for the Masons. Now instead of preparing a defence of what they call "their gentle Craft", they could well be stockpiling application forms as readers see the society in a kinder, gentler light, because in The Lost Symbol, the Masons are - wait for it - the good guys.

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Extract

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Masons: The Reluctant Text Symbols Their Us Counterparts Are the Good Guys in Dan Brown's Latest Novel, Thrusting Scotland's Most Famous Secret Society Into the Limelight

By contrast, The Da Vinci Code portrayed Opus Dei as shadowy religious fanatics charged with lethally suppressing the secret of Jesus and Mary Magdalene's relationship. Despite being fiction, it had a very real effect on the organisation.

"The book turned a private existence for our members into a more public one," said Andrew Soane, Opus Dei spokesman. "The Da Vinci Code meant that members had the occasion to speak about their membership and had to explain themselves to a lot of people."

The week The Da Vinci Code was released in 20...

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