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04/13/2004: "The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown"

The code-breaking is the only entertaining part of the story. Although the pedestrian (if not subpar) prose sometimes made me want to stop reading! His descriptions of people and settings consist of little else but stock phrases and cliches. Any published writer should be able to come up with better phrases than, "Gettum sensed an urgency in the eyes of this famed American scholar, almost as if his finding this tomb quickly were a matter of critical importance." (p. 378) I am not learned with cult or art histories so it is hard for me to judge whether his "explanations" are based on deep knowledge or layman information, mixed with an active imagination. However, I can say that the part where the Librarian narrating her BOOLEAN search strategies to the two main characters is rudimentary at best -- my 5th graders know how to do it. So the step-by-step explanation of the simplest search strings made me cringe. I wonder if art historians and theologians cringe at many of his expository passages? An interview with Amy Welborn on her new book "De-coding Da Vinci" at the Opus Dei website should be of interest to some.