The book's opening claim that "all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate" has led some to consider The Da Vinci Code as an intentional expose of orthodox Christianity's secret past. The same claim of factuality has resulted in a generally negative response from Roman Catholic and other Christian authorities, as well as from some historians who argue that Brown has willfully distorted the facts in the service of his story line. Others, including Brown himself, note that the "fact" statement does not claim that the theories articulated by characters in book regarding Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Christianity itself are accurate.
Synopsis
While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. Solving the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci…clues visible for all to see…and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.
Langdon joins forces with a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, and learns the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion—an actual secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci, among others. The Louvre curator has sacrificed his life to protect the Priory's most sacred trust: the location of a vastly important religious relic, hidden for centuries.
In a breathless race through Paris, London, and beyond, Langdon and Neveu match wits with a faceless power broker who appears to work for Opus Dei—a clandestine, Vatican-sanctioned Catholic sect believed to have long plotted to seize the Priory's secret. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle in time, the Priory's secret—and a stunning historical truth—will be lost forever.
This book is one of those keys for the uninitiated.
