I recently had the occasion of reading the Da Vinci Code. I must admit that I had the preconceived notion that the book would prove to be a collection of ill-conceived and dubious notions. After I read it I realized that my preconceived notion was correct. It has the thinnest of plots inflated in length by the jarring interspersion of pseudo-didactic material. What is most aggravating is that people take for real (including the author himself, unfortunately) the multiple distortions of facts presented in the book as actual history. Everything is held together by a notion that there is some sort of conspiracy in the Catholic Church to suppress the divine feminine. Hence, the book suffers from what I call the “conspiracy theory syndrome”: all data that prove the theory are taken at face value and all data that disprove it are interpreted as originating with the conspiracy and therefore cannot be accepted.

Someone who wants to read a magnificent piece of literature that involves mystery in a religious setting should read Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose or see the movie adaptation. I read the book (in French, years ago) and saw the movie and thought the movie was a good enough rendition of the book.