Yesterday I borrowed The DaVinci Code and I finished it this morning. I understand why people like it so much.
However (and with me there's always a however, you know), I dislike the implication that I am quicker at puzzles than a top cryptologist and a celebrated symboligist. I was about two chapters ahead of them on all the puzzles except the "Sofia" code (because I don't know Hebrew). The apple, Fibonacci, the backwards writing, the Mona Lisa, it got to the point that I was screaming at the book because I'd worked it out and what was taking these professionals so long?
Other than that, the only real problem I have is that Brown kept trying to say that all of these puzzles were so very incredibly simple. At face value, yes, if I was working them out as fast as they dished them out, they are quite simple. So why was it necessary that all of these simple things add up to a plot so complex and orchestrated? Why would a man who loves the simplest puzzles send Robert and Sophie on the longest goose chase to find the answers when everything could have been summed up quite differently and without their having to leave the museum?
I suppose the answer to that is that it doesn't make for much of a story.
The other thing that bugged me was the identity of the Teacher. Again, it was a complex solution to a simple problem. Brown had to try too hard to conceal the identity from the reader, and so wrote a character that doesn't quite fit: why would this man go to all of this trouble, including faking his own kidnapping, for so simple a thing?
Perhaps I've read too much Sherlock Holmes and Douglas Adams, but too many things about the mechanics of the book didn't fly for me. It has the effect of making the action and flow of the story seem too forced. The idea is a good one: all of these multitides of things fit together into one seemingly tight little package. The unfortunate bit is that as Brown's final project, the package doesn't strike me as all that tight.
It reminds me of the single flaw in the Shakespeare authorship argument. Many people argue that there were two London men involved in the theatre at the same time, William Shakespeare and William Shaxpere. Originally, as people in support of the argument claim, Shakespeare wrote the plays and Shaxpere is the fellow whom all the traditional documentation is about- the fellow with the lawsuits and so forth. The problem, they argue, is that history has confused the two.
The flaw here is one I've never heard brought up but seems obvious to me: if there were two Will S's in the London theatre, wouldn't somebody have made a joke about it? Don't tell me that Ben Jonson wouldn't have written that down in a play as an in company joke at least a couple of times. But no one has, at least nothing that's survived, and that bothers me.
That's how Brown's novel strikes me: the history works out, and it could be plausible, but at the same time it's just too far-fetched to totally suspend my disbelief. The strings that hold it together are too visble and slack.
However as far as the work that's been done, the knowledge Brown has amassed in the research for the book is admirable, and the numbers of people he has turned on to work of this nature is probably additionally remarkable. Though I'm sure many prolifics in these fields feel it to be a mixed blessing- people are getting involved, but for the wrong reasons.
That was the claim when Warner Brother's historical tragedy Anastasia came out. I've seen snippets of it and even with my limited knowledge of the assassination of the last reigning Czar and his family, it enrages me that anyone would take such liberties with a story based in fact.
I don't necessarily feel that The DaVinci Code does this; not any more than Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency does in providing an explanation for Coleridge's Kublah Kahn. Rather than avoiding all knowledge, these works merely put things together in speculation. The casual reader, like me, who might choose to learn more about the role of Mary Magdalene and the origins of the Bible after reading Brown's book, would not be terribly misled by this approach. Whereas the crass misportrayal of Anastasia, even if it is only a children's movie, is, if you ask me, reprehensible because it deals in the realm of facts, but skews them beyond recognition.
I liked the book, I might even consider owning a copy now that I've read it and know all the riddles once and for all. But I think that, as far as writing a nice little mystery full of twists that we don't see coming, I must admit that JK Rowling does a far better job of it than this book does. But, I guess I put him at a disadavatage: Dan Brown is fenced a little by the confines of the way our own world is suspected to function.