"THE DA VINCI CODE" : Dan Brown

This is one wild book that leads you on a thrilling adventure through the annals of Christian history as a cryptologist (Sophie Neveu) and a famed symbologist (Robert Langdon) set out to solve the mystery of the murder of Sophie's grandfather, a curator at the Louvre, and end up chasing the secret behind the Holy Grail.

The book is rife with puzzles and snippets of western history wherein the dark areas have been filled in with a vivid imagination (and some thorough research too, though I guess there is not much proof for many of the issues raised either ways ). The tone of the book is a bit childish however, like one of them "famous five" mysteries, but the story carries you on with such force that you take notice of the imperfections only in afterthought.

Of course it's difficult to maintain a balance between historical discourses and a thrilling mystery, and Dan Brown has done a wonderful job of it. The reader is led into dark alleys of Christian history from where he can start off his own exploration; in fact there is a book released lately which discusses on the issues raised by "The Da Vinci Code" and in Europe, tourists are explicitly asking to be shown around the places mentioned in the book!

As for the story, it is no doubt a page-turner but it does let you down at the end with an awkward conclusion. Even the final puzzle at the climax, which one expected to be the toughest, turns out to be a sitter and the reader solves it even before the protagonists. While that might give some a childlike pleasure it did irritate me to find the protagonists fighting it out for such an obvious solution. The characterisation is weak too (but then as I said it is difficult to balance things when you are creating a potpourri of history, murder and romance) and the chemistry between Sophie and Langdon, although holding much promise, has been ill-developed.

All in all, a wonderful read, this book does open up our minds to new queries regarding Jesus Christ and The Holy Grail, besides of course being a thrilling murder mystery.

suman datta