The Da Vinci Code (Paperback)

Which is where I think a lot of people seem to be missing the point. Although the author says at the beginning that there are a few definite facts in the book, he doesn't actually say the whole book is truth! It is ficiton after all.

One of the great things about reading a good book is that you can get lost in a completely different world. This book does that beautifully. It makes suggestions that makes you think but of course no body is claiming we should believe them.

Every chapter ends on a cliff hanger, meaning it is completely unputdownable. Famous landmarks are described in a way that makes you seee them from a different light. The suspense is maintained throughout. It is a fantastic journey, described in immense detail.

I think people who like to pick holes in a subject and find the flaws won't enjoy this book - but maybe they should stick to non fiction anyway. The book is a grown-up Harry Potter, designed to allow you to lose yourself in another world for a few hours.

The dodgy writing is the biggest problem. It's one of the worst-written books I've ever encountered, not only written with far too much emphasis on how it will be adapted into a movie, but a bad movie at that. Start taking Brown's characters' reactions literally and the book becomes unintentionally hilarious. If the actors follow the book's descriptions, the film will be full of people gasping, holding their hands over their mouths, actually staggering backwards at the slightest bit of new information, and greeting surprising news by standing up and announcing "this is unbelievable!" to nobody in particular. Brown seems to (justifiably) doubt his ability to make his readers feel any emotion, and so has his cardboard characters wildly overact to give the reader pointers as to how they should be reacting.

Once you've started to hear all the French characters' voices as refugees from "'Allo 'Allo" you won't be able to stop. Similarly the cartoon English Aristocrat, fixated with the Holy Grail but almost equally obsessed with tea and the fact that he "schooled" at Oxford, will forever sound like Sir Bernard Chumley in my head.

I can't even agree with this being a "quick read" - the first half especially is absolutely turgid. It takes the leads over a hundred pages to run down a corridor because they keep having to stop and explain the plot to each other. The background information regarding art history and Grail lore is unceremoniously dumped in, in the form of the characters lecturing each other, or in a couple of instances, the lead character reminiscing fondly about a lecture he's given in the past (he's running for his life at the time.) On these occasions Brown's delusions really come to the fore, with Robert Langdon(clearly based on the author) giving such an inspiring lecture that his students just about stop short of standing on their desks and shouting "oh captain, my captain!" Later a roomful of uninterested prisoners experience a similar Road To Damascus moment as the dull male lead shows them some slides.

Which brings us to Brown's smugness again. I lost count of how many tidbits of information were prefaced with comments like "it often amazed him how few people knew about..." Each revelation is announced with a flourish of "You didn't know about this did you, you proles? But I did, for I am the mighty Dan Brown, and I have read a book! Kneel before me!" Apparently the book in question is called "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," and I haven't read it myself so I hadn't heard the entire conspiracy theory it relates, but I'd heard the majority of its "shocking" component parts from various sources so I'm not sure what he's got to feel so self-satisfied about.

Brown doesn't credit the book of course, nor any others he used for research, as a bibliography might encourage interested readers to follow up on the mythology themselves, rather than just spending the money on Dan Brown's back catalogue like they ought to.

There's so much else to gripe about - the clunking cliche of an albino killer (again with an eye to the film? Having a disconcerting-looking villain saves so much of that pesky character-building work you'd have to do making him creepy, doesn't it? And being universally portrayed as murderous nutters in fiction must be such a thrill to the albino population. I knew an albino when I was growing up and he didn't murder anyone, but maybe that was just laziness on his part.)

Any research that doesn't involve cut-and-paste from someone else's book is clearly too much trouble; the lead has written a book on the Knights Templar but has never before visited the majority of crucial locations they visit, including the Temple Church - so he's obviously modelled on the author then! What a nice mild climate they've got in Scotland. The Metropolitan Police don't seem too worried about these impostors called the London Police who seem to be running all over the place with guns. Maybe they're all having a nice trip on the Millennium Eye - is that near the London Eye?

A waste of time then? Clearly not - it's much too much fun laying into what's wrong with it! It won't make me rush off to buy any more of his books, mind.