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Overall Summary

Deception Point is a science fiction novel by Dan Brown. The story revolves around the discovery of extraterrestrial life in the Arctic Circle. While not as successful as his earlier work, Deception Point received positive reviews from critics and fans alike.

Rachel Sexton is a high-level staffer who works for the National Reconnaissance Office. She gets sent on a mission by the President of the United States to investigate a meteorite that has crashed in the Arctic Circle and examine it for evidence of extraterrestrial life. NASA says that some insect-like fossils have been found around it, but they don’t resemble any Earth insects. Rachel also happens to be Senator Sedgewick Sexton’s daughter; he’s running against President Herney in an election campaign.

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 Corky Marlinson, one of the leading astrophysicists in his field. There’s also political pressure on them from NASA as well as President Herney because they’re being used by Sedgewick to prove that there was life on Mars.

Rachel’s team is joined by a group of soldiers, but they’re not who they seem. When the team arrives at the meteorite crater site, Ming notices something wrong with it and moves in for a closer look. He’s attacked by tiny robots controlled by the soldiers that drown him in water he falls into after being hit.

Tolland discovers that the pit is not what it seems. There are traces of seawater in the pit, which suggests foul play. After sharing this with his team members and surviving an attack by Delta Force soldiers, Tolland and three other scientists escape to a U.S. Navy submarine called the Charlotte where they inform William Pickering about their ordeal and how there was something wrong at the meteorite site all along.

Three people are brought to a ship owned by Tolland in the Atlantic Ocean near the New Jersey coastline where they will hide out for a while. Unfortunately, they are quickly apprehended by soldiers from Delta Force, who reveal that Pickering is behind all of this and that he’s working with Rachel’s father. It turns out that her father has less than noble motives for wanting to dismantle NASA: He wants to redirect public funding into education so private space investors can take over space exploration.

Scientists fight off Delta Force soldiers, but they accidentally kill them. The scientists escape in a helicopter, which Pickering attempts to shoot down with a machine gun. During the battle, the scientists get away and Pickering crashes into the ocean in his helicopter. The heat from his helicopter causes a whirlpool that sucks both him and the ship under water.