by Dan Brown

First, in case you've been locked up in solitary for the last two years, a brief plot description. Harvard symbology prof Robert Langdon is roused from his Paris hotel bed when the police come calling. He was supposed to meet a fellow academic, the curator of the Louvre Museum, for drinks after his lecture but the fellow didn't show. The reason is that the curator was murdered. Langdon is implicated by the man's last words, written as he lay dying as part of a coded message. At first Langdon doesn't realize he is implicated, and thinks he is merely being asked to help. When police cryptographer Sophie Neveu arrives and unexpectedly warns him, however, it sets in motion an unlikely escape and a mad dash through the museum, Paris and, finally, the French and English countrysides. Meanwhile, the code must be deciphered. But it's not only the police who are on Langdon's trail (and now Sophie's) but members of one or more secret societies, some with murder on their minds. For the same man who murdered the curator also terminated three other members of the secret society whose sole purpose is to guard a secret the Catholic Church would do anything to suppress. Langdon and Sophie and a few others they recruit on the way are off on a cryptographic treasure hunt for what may well be the Holy Grail, and it's not what you might think. A page-turner, indeed, with murder and betrayal only part of the scenario.

Dan Brown tapped into an apparently unsatisfied lust for details about the secrets that surround our world and, specifically, our religions. Dealing from a deck that includes not only religion, but art, conspiracy theories, Leonardo da Vinci's enigmatic and sometimes ambiguous work, semi-secret sects within the Catholic Church, as well as both fact and fiction related to the Holy Grail and its keepers, the Templars, among others, Brown makes the stew convincing by rushing through it in tiny chunk-like chapters that chew quickly and digest even more rapidly. The writing is breezy, the dialogue amusingly stilted, the characterizations sketched with predictable brush-strokes in the same sfumato style as the Mona Lisa. The action unfolds with the inexorable pacing and logic of a movie script (was there ever a doubt?), and does, indeed, hold one's attention. There's no real depth, no eloquent description, no "flair." Even so, it's the perfect beach or rainy day novel, which helped make it a best-seller around the world. What's not to like?

Well, some readers have been taken in by the "facts" of the novel, and others have been scandalized by some of its "speculations." It's nearly impossible to recall a novel that caused so much angry discussion—perhaps except for Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, with which TDVC is sometimes compared. You see, some have called Brown a "liar" because some of what he deals out as fact is really fiction, or hazy history at best. Some have called him a heretic because of what his characters say about the Church, about Jesus Christ, and about the home life Jesus might have had, as well as the nature of the Grail itself. Many wonderful dialogues have sprung up, some quite heated, about what is really nothing more than a thriller with pretensions of greatness. Here, I have to defend Brown. It's a fast-paced story—it has a beat you can dance to. It's a fun read for those who dig conspiracies and deep, dark secrets, and it does fuel some occasional lapses—"Wow, can that really be true? That's cool! I always/never thought those were connected!" But in the long run, it's just a novel. If, like me, you can claim smugly to have deciphered a couple of the riddles before their solution is explained, then in essence the book has made an accomplice out of you. After all, who doesn't love ancient mysteries? It's the whole reason Indiana Jones 1 and 3, specifically, still ring such a bell among the most romantic of us.

A few caveats: an author named Lewis Perdue, whose books The Da Vinci Legacy and Daughter of God he claims were plagiarized to form the basis of the Brown novel, may disagree. His books saw only minor acclaim, but now teeter on the edge of resuscitation thanks in part to his proposed lawsuit. The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, a work that poses some of the same theories espoused by characters in the Brown novel, apparently also feel they've been plagiarized though their work is listed, almost credited, in Brown's novel—and he doesn't seem to borrow any text. I haven't read the Perdue books, so I'll let readers decide for themselves.

What else is interesting, however, is how many writers seem to take issue with Brown's use of the word "facts." Because he lists several "facts" at the beginning, and because at least one of them—relating to the sect known as The Priory of Sion—appears to be a French hoax perpetrated in the earlier part of the last century (or it may not be, since there is a historical Priory—one of those hazy areas), people take offense at the "manipulation" of facts. But isn't that what we novelists and storytellers do? Don't we allow Anne Rice her historical vampires, debating their motivations even though we tend to agree that vampires don't exist? Have we forgotten that our characters don't necessarily have to tell the truth? Or be reliable, or even be likeable? Do we really think that John Watson chronicled the exploits of the Great Detective? Why are we so cavalier about historical figures who are cast as vampires (or whatever)? Novels are vessels of truth, perhaps "cosmic truth," delivered through carefully controlled lies. And that's the bottom line—just as in Oliver Stone's film JFK, a bunch of characters speculating on real and fabricated events (even tantalizing, appealing, or blasphemous events) does not actually make them real. It makes for good fiction—or at least readable, entertaining fiction, and The Da Vinci Code is that, even if it is no more. Strangely, most critics don't note the flashes of humor Brown includes among the mock-serious themes, especially as one approaches the denouement. We all manipulate facts to fit our fiction, and some make a career out of it®so why pick on Dan Brown? It seems as though it must be because he implies some double-dealing by the Vatican . . . And we all know that can't possibly be right. In any case, Brown should be held accountable for his prose, not his plot—which does touch on quite a few delicious possibilities!

My own reference shelf sags beneath books on Arthurian Legend, the Grail, the Templars, and various interconnected speculations and myth. I have Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Bloodline of the Grail, and Ravenscroft's works on the Grail and the Spear. I have tomes on Nazis and the Occult sitting beside Barnes and Noble reprints on Freemasonry, secret societies, and all sorts of arcane knowledge. We all know about the Vatican's secret archives, and we've all read of subterfuge in the Holy See's history. Ultimately, the sources were available for me to use as much as anyone. Whether the first was Brown or Perdue, or someone else, these ideas have been swirling out there for decades—and we as audiences have loved them in other incarnations. If one's faith is tested by a novel astute enough to connect so much easily available information, then that faith must not be as solid as one wants to believe. Is it sacrilegious to portray the Vatican or its agents in a poor or questionable light? Perhaps, but it's by no means new. The Blood of the Lamb and its sequel by Tom Monteleone come to mind, both classics that use deep religion (and science) as a playing field. And I'm reminded of the Seventies' Simon Quinn thriller series The Inquisitor, in which the pseudonymous Martin Cruz Smith turned his Jesuit education into the racy adventures of Francis Xavier Killy, an assassin who operates under a shadowy arm of the Society of Jesus (when he kills, he has to do penance). Recently, The Apocalypse Door by James D. MacDonald used a nearly identical device, pitting secret agent nuns and priests against Templars and . . . well, see my review. And in the real world, the infamous Inquisition is but one example of the Vatican not being altogether blameless in the area of intrigue and horror.

The Da Vinci Code is not much of a literary feat. It is not a stylistic exercise that must be studied for its inventiveness. Its short, punchy chapters create a head-spinning effect that blunts a reader's more critical tendencies—though the result is also a plethora of undeveloped scenes, where opportunities for character development and descriptive narrative give way to stage directions and travel-brochure name-dropping. In fact, it reads like a dumbed-down version of the author's earlier (and slightly better written) Angels & Demons, a novel which uses the same treasure hunt device to tell a deeper, more interesting, more humorous, and better-realized tale. But these flaws do not make TDVC a bad read—they simply help make it a best-seller. As a wise, well published novelist friend often says: "I just can't write badly enough to create a best-seller!" There's a lot of truth in that, and it's the way of the world. Whether or not TDVC belongs in that category, everyone who reads it will have to decide. From a writer's perspective, what's really so wrong with telling a story millions of people apparently want to hear, or argue about?