The Da Vinci Code


My copy of Dan Brown’s best seller had already defeated two readers with a lower tolerance for crap than I possess. Undaunted, I attacked the tome and managed to finish it in a few days, either side of the house move.
It’s not a bad book by any means, and I have lots of respect for anyone who can make millions spinning a conspiracy theory into fiction. However it does suffer from al the problems of this particular breed of thriller. Brown could have passed on the arcane secrets of PHI or whatever more concisely. In particular, he should have removed all the flashbacks, which were even more stilted than the rest of the book, and just told us what we needed to know. Likewise, once soomeone’s picked up a gun we don’t need to know the make, model and calibre every time they remember it’s in their pocket.
And, of course, there is the controversy over just how many of the historical and artistic “facts” that drive the story were invented by Brown. The early history of Christianity, or any religion, could be interesting stuff and I’d like to find out how much of this work of fiction really is fiction.

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