Dan Brown
The Da Vinci Code (2003)
Author: Dan Brown
Genre: Mystery (Suspense/Thriller)
Plot Summary:
Called upon to assist in the mysterious murder of Lourve's curator, renowned art historian Robert Langdon soon finds the he is, in fact, a suspect. With the help of the Sophie Neveu, a cryptologist with the French police, and a few odd clues left behind by the curator (including a key and hints pointing to the mysterious Holy Grail of mythology), Sophie shirks her superior's investigation, helps Robert to escape, and the two are soon off on a wild adventure trailed closely by Sophie now-enraged supervisor Bezu Fache. However, unbeknownst to either Sophie, Langdon, or Fache, there is a third interested in accessing the secrets of the late curator--a shadowy figure who goes by the name Teacher and his "partners" in crime, a bishop and a monk involved in the ultra-conservative Catholic sect Opus Dei. The wild scavenger hunt for clues that will solve the riddle of the "Da Vinci code" takes Langdon and Sophie from Paris to London and points between. Along the way the two would-be Grail seekers learn much of hidden historical lore tied to the legend of the Holy Grail and the implications this knowledge has with regard to the history of Christian Church. SPOILER: Indeed, the curator is none other than Sophie's grandfather who also happens to have been the last remaining Grand Master of a secret society charged with protecting the final resting place (and true nature) of the Holy Grail. Langdon and Sophie find an ally in a friend of Langdon's who turns out to be mysterious Teacher. When all is said and done, it would seem that the adventure was nothing more than a wild goose chase...or does Langdon figure out the riddle and choose to let it remain secret?
Geographical Location: Paris, London, the Lourve, Roslyn Chapel, Westminster Abbey, Temple Church, Saint-Sulpice, and the French countryside
Time Period: Modern day (2003)
Series: Robert Langdon appeared in Brown's book Angels and Demons and will appear in The Solomon Key
Appeal Characteristics:
This is a very fast-paced thriller. The book is 454 pages in length but contains 105 chapters. Most chapters clock in at around 5 to 6 pages. In addition, Brown has four storylines running through the book: 1) Langdon and Sophie on the run; 2) Bezu Fache in hot pursuit; 3) Bishop Aringarosa acting as middle man between the Teacher and his monk/mercenary Silas and while "blackmailing" the Vatican in a bid to increase the influence of Opus Dei; and 4) the attempts of Silas to beat Fache to Langdon and Sophie. Brown deftly switches back and forth between these storylines ending each vignette with a cliffhanger that has the reader pushing forth through a few more chapters to find out what happens next. The use of short chapters was especially detrimental to my sleep schedule. I found myself staying up promising to stop after the next chapter only to find myself saying, "What the hell. One more chapter won't kill me. They are, after all, only a few pages long". Of course, this mentality usually resulted in my reading at least 10 more chapters than I had intended. What makes this book most interesting, however, is the wealth of historical information included. Some of it--especially that based on the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln--is suspect. But Brown does a great job of encouraging the reader to buy into his hypothesis by weaving known historical facts, persons, and places into his narrative. Indeed, I doubt whether one buys Brown's assertions or not, the reader will never look at Da Vinci's The Last Supper the same. It should be noted that Brown has stated that his point was not to necessarily attack the Catholic Church but to question the supression of feminimity in most western religions. In addition, the fact that Langdon and Sophie are plowing through numerous puzzles and clues will have the reader trying to figure the answers before Brown's protagonists do so. The book is a lot of fun and definitely deserves the designation "page turner".
Read-alikes:
This is the sequel to Brown’s Angels and Demons (2000), and he is working on a follow-up entitled The Solomon Key that will also feature Robert Langdon. Good read-alikes include John Case’s The Genesis Code and The Eighth Day, Thomas Gifford’s The Assassini, Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s The Seville Communion, Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, Daniel Silva’s The Confessor, Barbara Wood’s The Prophetess, and Katherine Neville’s The Eight. Even Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian makes a good read-alike. For background on the purported “truths” in The Da Vinci Code, take a look at Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln or Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code by Bart Ehrman, Chair of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Red Flags: a bit of violence, criticism of the Catholic Church--especially Opus Dei
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