If in order to best talk about the issues that will arise at the water cooler over the film debut of the Da Vinci Code, you're looking for a nice, nifty (and brief) review of the Dan Brown book itself, try this one from the truly unique British arts critic, Christopher Howse. You'll not find a point-by-point refutation of the Code's grievous errors (though those are necessary and available elsewhere) but instead a general criticism of the novel's lurid style and some most interesting comments about the novel's thematic progenitors.
Here's a few bits to entice you...
All along the Mediterranean littoral, tourists awake to find their torsos marked with pale oblong patches, 178mm by 196mm. This is the mark of Da Vinci. It's what happens when you fall asleep in the sun with a copy of The Da Vinci Code carelessly open on your body.
Dan Brown's novel has sold six million copies, and its 605 pages seem just the thing to shove in the hand-luggage for a holiday read. But, goodness, it has annoyed people. Presses turn day and night printing books rebutting every error in Brown's fat farrago: The Da Vinci Hoax; Da Vinci Code Decoded; Cracking the Da Vinci Code. Somehow, they add up to more copies than the original.
The reason for the anger is that the novel says rude things about Jesus and the Church. In that respect, it's a sort of Satanic Verses, only even worse written. "Everyone in the reception area gaped in wonderment at the half-naked albino offering forth a bleeding clergyman," is an example of the stylistic register...
and...
...Translate the genre to modern times and anyone can spin a conspiracy tale based on the premise that what you see in the Catholic Church is not what you get. Let's think. Did you know that Pope John Paul on the feast of St Lucy knotted, by moonlight, the rope that was to hang Roberto Calvi beneath Blackfriars Bridge? The Blackfriars were in it up to here with the Mafia and the Banco Ambrosiano and Russian gold. It all fits.
It's only a novel, for heaven's sake. Didn't Mozart put a lot of Masonic fal-de-lal in The Magic Flute? And in Dracula, Van Helsing suddenly produces the Host - "I brought it from Amsterdam. I have an Indulgence" - and scatters the sacred elements around Lucy Westenra's tomb. This is unpleasant to a Catholic sensibility, and necessitates the hard work of unravelling the misunderstanding of what an "Indulgence" is.
The immunity of fiction to factual correction is undermined by two things about Brown's book. One is that readers believe some of the novelistic assertions of the narrative's truth. The other is the surprising ease of selling as the basis for a story the judgment that the Catholic Church is a monster of deception. Will it come within the terms of David Blunkett's law against incitement to religious hatred?...
