The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

I was probably one of the very few people on the planet who had not read The Da Vinci Code. I have seen the film but to tell you the truth I wasn’t too impressed. That said, I decided to give the book a go to see what all the fuss is about… and I was pleasantly surprised! I read this book in a matter of days, I just couldn’t put it down. It was fast paced, action packed and full of twists and turns.

Havard professor Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call while on business in Paris: the elderly curator of the Lourve has been brutally murdered inside the museum. Alongside the body, police have found a series of baffling codes. As Langdon and a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, begin to sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to find a trail that leads to the works of Leonardo Da Vinci – and suggests the answer to a mystery that stretches deep into the vault of history.

Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine code and quickly assemble the pieces of the puzzle, a stunning historical truth will be lost forever…

The plot was gripping, the historical links were very interesting. The ideas/myths that were prominent in this story have been around for centuries but Dan Brown pulled them all together in a very good fictional story. I know a lot of people have attacked this book for being historically inaccurate and claim that it portrays the Catholic church inaccurately, but I think that most people would only see this novel as nothing more than a fun read. There have been other books in the past (and more to come I am sure) that talk about the same myths and these too have been heavily criticised… although it does make you wonder why the church would speak out against something so passionately if it is just fiction and nothing more?

I think this is a must read for anyone who likes a good mystery, adventure and fast paced story that brings together many aspects of myth and history to create a fun, fictional story. I know Dan Brown receives a lot of backlash about how he “can’t write” and how “crap” his novels are, but I don’t think they claim to be great literature, just a fun adventure story that shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

Rating 4/5