The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown
Byron Merritt

Robert Langdon is a scholar who is awakened in his hotel room one night by the Paris police. When he goes with the authorities to a murder scene, he's pretty upset about it. Apparently, the docent for the Louvre Museum has been murdered. And Mr. Langdon was supposed to have met up with the murder victim several hours prior to his death. But he says he never did. Does the investigating detective believe him?

Sophie Neveu is a cryptologist who works for the Paris police. She gets 'called' into action when it is discovered that the murder victim left a strange message scrawled on the floor of the Museum. She's also related to someone very involved in this murder case. Whoa!

Mr. Teabing is a Grail enthusiast who has more money than God. He's been trying to find out the truth behind the Holy Grail and a secret society whom he has discovered was designed to protect it: The Priory of Scion. This group had some prestigious names affiliated with it too. Leonardo Da Vinci, Galileo, Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and a slew of other historically famous people.

Silas is an albino who works for a section of the church known as the Opus Dei. He's a hit-man with a serious job to do. If anyone ever found out what the Holy Grail really was and what it represented, the Christian faith might crumble into ruin. That can't happen. So Silas is sent out into the world to make sure it doesn't. He gets his assignments from someone called "The Teacher." An invisible person to all except for one person. Who is this Teacher?

The Good: The pace at which this novel moves is mind-boggling. A reader can whip through it in just a few short days (even the slowest of readers, I would think). The action is excellent, and so are the historical references that Mr. Brown has thoroughly researched (the Priory of Scion, the Holy Grail, Mary Magdalene, Leonardo Da Vinci, etc. etc. etc.).

The 'Not-so-Good': Do these characters ever sleep? After being awakened at an un-Godly hour, Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu don't rest for days! That accompanied with their multiple, miraculous epiphanies as they try to break codes that are designed to be nearly unbreakable, stretched believability several times.

I also didn't care much for the ending. Mr. Brown loves to flip the protagonist/antagonist relationships of his characters. I don't mind that normally. But it happened so many times that it became ho-hum after a while. And I felt that the revealing of the prime antagonist was just a tiny bit forced. Something used for shock value more than possible reality. I know, I know, this is fiction, but let's not get too far out here.

Even with these faults, I'm glad that I read 'The Da Vinci Code.' It was worthy of my reading time and it made me look at our current world religions with a new light toward the feminine.

B.M.

November 2003