Deception Point

Deception Point is a 2001 political conspiracy, thriller novel by American author Dan Brown, the famed writer of The Da Vinci Code. Here, the conspiracy doesn’t concern the Catholic Church but rather a political cover-up related to possible evidence of extraterrestrial life found in the Arctic Circle. While not as financially successful as The Da Vinci Code, Deception Point received largely positive reviews from critics and is considered an audience favorite among Dan Brown enthusiasts.

The protagonist of the book is Rachel Sexton, a high-level staffer working for a US government agency known as the National Reconnaissance Office. She is sent on a mission by the President of the United States, Zachary Herney, to investigate the crash site of a meteorite in the Arctic Circle and to examine the meteorite remains for possible evidence of extraterrestrial life. According to NASA, insect-like fossil material has been found around the meteorite; it resembles insect life found on Earth but is not exactly like anything ever identified by entomologists on this planet. Aside from the fact that he is her boss, Rachel has another connection to the President: her father, Senator Sedgewick Sexton, is a presidential candidate running against the unpopular President Herney.

The team sent to the Arctic Circle comprises Rachel and four other civilian scientists: Michael Tolland, an oceanographer who is a household name because of his frequent television appearances; Norah Mangor, a glaciologist with a cold and prickly personality; Wailee Ming, a brilliant paleontologist; and, finally, Corky Marlinson, a highly strange individual who is also one of the leading astrophysicists in his field. There is also a political dynamic to the team’s research: NASA is being beaten down in public and is being used by Sedgewick as a scapegoat for the ostensible failings and wastefulness of the Herney administration. Therefore, there is significant political pressure placed on the team to confirm the suspicion that the meteorite remains include evidence of extraterrestrial life as it would represent a major achievement on NASA’s part and justify the current presidential administration’s investment in the space agency.



Rachel’s team is joined by a mysterious and somewhat shady group of Delta Force soldiers. When the team arrives at the meteorite crater, Ming says he observes something fishy about the site where the pit is located. He moves in for a closer look but is attacked by tiny robots known as microbots that are controlled by the Delta Force team. The attack causes him to fall into a small body of water that’s collected in the pit; Ming drowns as a result of the attack.

Tolland investigates the irregularity spotted by Ming, confirming that Ming’s suspicions were well founded. There appear to be traces of seawater in the pit when there should only be freshwater. This suggests somebody has tampered with the site. After sharing his discovery with the rest of the team, the four remaining team members are attacked by the Delta Force soldiers. Mangor is killed, and the other three team members just barely manage to escape when a U.S. Navy submarine, the U.S.S. Charlotte, comes to their aid. Fortunately, because of the manner of the attack, the Delta Force soldiers assume that they have killed the entire team when in reality, Sexton, Tolland, and Marlinson are still alive and now aware of the conspiracy against their work. Once on the submarine, the scientists inform William Pickering, Director of the National Reconnaissance Office, of everything that has transpired since landing at the meteorite site.

The three are brought to a ship owned by Tolland in the Atlantic Ocean near the New Jersey coastline where they will hide out for the time being. Unfortunately, they are quickly apprehended by the Delta Force soldiers, revealing that Pickering is the mastermind behind the attempts to kill the scientists. It is also revealed that Rachel’s father’s motives for wanting to dismantle NASA are less than noble, despite his claims that he wishes to redirect the public funding for the space program into education. In reality, Rachel’s father is working on behalf of private space investors known as the Space Frontier Foundation who wish to privatize space exploration.



The scientists fend off the Delta Force soldiers, killing them in self-defense. Unfortunately, Pickering arrives in a helicopter, shooting at the scientists with a machine gun. During the fight, the scientists escape the ship while Pickering, in an attempt to get a better shot at his adversaries, accidentally collides with the ship, crashing his helicopter into the sea. The heat from the helicopter causes a whirlpool in the ocean and both the helicopter and the ship get sucked into the water’s vortex.

In the end, there’s a happy ending for the younger Sexton, who begins a romantic relationship with Tolland, but not for the older Sexton, whose plotting to kill NASA is revealed to the public, contributing to Herney winning re-election.

While not as grand or ambitious as Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, Deception Point is, in the words of Publishers Weekly, “an excellent thriller.”