A Sham in Historical Fiction

A person would have had to be living under the proverbial rock not to have heard about this book. It was first a very famous novel and then it was made into a critically panned movie. The fact that many people bought the book, and then gushed about its merits, says nothing about the true merits of the manuscript. The fact is that there are no merits to the manuscript no matter how many people read it.
 
Dan Brown wrote “The Davinci Code” after he had already written “Angels and Demons”. Seeing what a weak response his first thriller garnered, he felt that it was necessary to bore the public with another piece of unsubstantiated “historical” dreck. Apparently, the value of the book is in the controversy created rather than actual literary worth and historical accuracy. So let’s examine why this particular book should be dragged from your book shelf, chopped into tiny bits and then thrown into the fire, shall we?
 
Aside from all of the inaccuracies present from a Christian perspective are the ones that actually have to do with story and plot. Brown originally made the statement that he had used historical documents from which he based his fantasy. He later recanted this when he was faced with proving the statement. His protagonist is weakly drawn from a mental portrait that Brown has of himself. He believes that he is some kind of historical Indiana Jones; finding the truth in the lost questions of times past. However, he is better at concocting fiction.
 
And again, he is better at concocting fiction than writing it. A publisher’s duty is to drum up sales of an author’s book so that everyone makes money. Well, Brown and his publisher made a lot of it. The controversy was whether the claims of the book were possible or not. After many people did the actual research that Brown neglected to do, the resounding answer was no. There is no way that any of what he said can be construed as true.
 
So, in the end, all we have here is a book that relies on a weak premise, sketchy characters and site seeing. The reader would be better served to visit the Louvre and St. Peter’s than read about them in this book. His descriptions are as weak as the rest of the book.