This is essentially an action-adventure-thriller-mystery story. An art director at the Louvre is killed. Robert Langdon is called in to help the police and becomes their prime suspect. The dead man left clues, but not to find the killer. He wanted Langdon to help his granddaughter and inadvertantly implicated him. The rest of the book is Langdon and the granddaughter, Sophie, following those clues while evading the police and the killer.

Anyone who enjoys a good action-adventure-thriller-mystery and who doesn't mind controversial topics.

I liked the short chapters, moving back and forth between the main characters and others -- particularly at the cliffhanger moments. This technique definitely helps build the suspense.

I also liked that something other than finding the killer propels the main characters.

It's well written and has the immediacy to draw you in and keep you involved.

If you can't accept a premise that disagrees with your own world view, this will be hard to swallow, and possibly infuriating.

I don't agree with the premise (the information the art director is trying to get to his granddaughter), but it makes an intriguing story. Brown pointed out in the story that these ideas have been around for a while and my experience confirms this.

I suspect that the controversy comes from those who've never heard these theories before and a) take them to heart and accept that they must be true or b) seek to defend their faith from heresy.

One of the things I truly appreciated about this story is that Brown discusses the nature of faith (believing what hasn't been or can't be proven) and does not paint Christian as the "bad guys" even thought one of his characters does do that. It's definitely a book that will make you think. Whether it changes your ideas depends on your own faith.

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Created May 28, 2006 at 8:49pm • Submit your own review...