The Da Vinci Code

“The Da Vinci Code” is one long puzzle run at a sprint: clues hidden in paintings and symbols, a murder, and a chase that starts in Paris and seldom lets up. As entertainment it is remarkably easy to keep reading. Its history is another matter: much of what it presents as fact is not. It suits readers who want a brisk conspiracy thriller and can treat the scholarship as part of the fiction.

Worth knowing Robert Langdon’s second outing (2003), but readable on its own; Angels & Demons (2000) came first. The opening “Fact” page presents the Priory of Sion as real, yet the documents it rests on were a twentieth-century hoax, so the history here is best read as fiction. Two authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail sued Brown’s publisher for copying their theory and lost in 2006, the year Ron Howard filmed the book with Tom Hanks.

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