"Angels And Demons", Dan Brown And Fr. Thomas J. Reese, S.J.

Question to Dan Brown author of Angels and Demons: Both Digital Fortress and Angels & Demons deal with secretive topics--covert spy agencies, conspiracy theories, classified technologies. How do you get your information?

Answer of Dan Brown: I am constantly amazed how much "secret" information is readily available out there if one knows where to dig. The Freedom of Information Act, of course, is a great resource, primarily because it can lead to specific individuals who are knowledgeable in a given field and sometimes are willing to talk about it. In many cases, understandably, these contacts prefer to remain nameless, but sometimes depending on what they've told you, they like being acknowledged in the book.

Occasionally, research is simply a matter of finding the proper printed resource. For example, the detailed description in Angels & Demons depicting the intimate ritual of Vatican conclave--the threaded necklace of ballots...the mixing of chemicals...the burning of the ballots--much of that was from a book [Inside the Vatican The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church] published on Harvard University Press by a [Fr. Thomas J. Reese, S.J.] Jesuit scholar

who had interviewed more than a hundred cardinals, which is obviously something I never would have had the time or connections to do.

Link (here) to Dan Brown's website.

For a real real description of angels and demons, read St. Ignatius of Loyola's Discernment of Spirits (here)