You may recall that I love my pulp fiction and, on the train, I finished the latest and greatest thriller, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. I picked it up in a sale in a bookstore in one of those three-for-two offers. Amazingly, I had missed all the buzz about it and it was only after I had started to read it that I looked around to see half of the people on the train reading the same book. It’s certainly grabbed the attention of London commuters. Anyway, time to review it for Amazon as I haven’t been keeping those up and my ranking has started to slip!
It’s very easy to get sucked into the world of Dan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci Code. It’s a thriller from start to finish and one of those books that can have you hooked in just a few pages – you will be stealing yourself away to read the next chapter before you know it. Maybe you can see the blockbuster film or see the Ludlum or Grisham parallels but what makes this novel stand out from others is enormous amount of plot detail. Regardless of your opinion of Les Dossiers Secrets (or any of the premise behind the tale) the description of the artworks, relics and rituals in the novel is fascinating. Most importantly, however, the detail enhances the story rather than detracting from it. You may imagine that such vivid descriptions of paintings, churches or cryptology would slow the story-telling but the opposite is true: the finer points of this work add to the pace. It’s probably a novel you should re-read to see if you can decipher the codes when you know the answers and it’s certainly a novel that makes you want to delve into the history behind it. All in all, it’s a great suspense story that makes religious symbology entertaining.