Dan Brown's book on Washington

Is reviewed, unfavorably, in Slate. See "Dan Brown's Washington: What does The Lost Symbol get wrong about the nation's capital? Everything." From the article:

... The fundamental premise of The Lost Symbol is that Washington is a "mystical city," and it is this error that makes the book so maddening. In Brown's Washington, the marble, the wide streets, the monuments all signify some kind of connection with the divine. The city encodes transcendental secrets about God and the potential of the human mind. But anyone who has spent more than a Tourmobile ride in D.C. knows that what makes Washington interesting is its very smallness, the contrast between its grand architecture and the human machinations that take place within it. From high to low, from Democracy to The Pelican Brief, Washington novels have exploited and reveled in this human spectacle. There are conspiracies in Washington, but they are conspiracies about money, sex, elections, and public policy. Those are the currencies of our city.

Brown posits a Washington oozing with spiritual energy and secrets of the known universe. But in the real Washington, if you held a panel about the Ancient Mysteries, the unification of religion and science, and all that other Brownian hoo-ha, you couldn't fill a small conference room at the Brookings Institution—even if you served a free lunch and invited all the interns. Washington is the least spiritual, and least mystical, place imaginable: No one has thought about their immortal soul here since Damn Yankees.