Well, I really can't tell you any more than this without spoiling too much. Strange codes scrawled at the murder scene bring on stage one Sophie Neveu, an expert cryptographer, who turns out to have secret messages for Langdon, leading the two to flee on a trip that begins as an attempt to save Langdon's life and eventually enmeshes them in the famous medieval 'quest for the holy grail' – except that the grail is not the chalice that Jesus used at the Last Supper but. Before the meeting can happen, Saunière is murdered under bizarre circumstances, and Langdon is seemingly about to be charged with his killing. The main character, Professor Robert Langdon, a supposed expert in 'symbology' from Harvard, while in Paris as a guest lecturer, has plans to meet with the curator of the Louvre, Jacques Saunière.

And more than the barest description of the plot would destroy the fun for prospective readers. I am not presumptuous enough to claim to be an expert critic of contemporary American fiction. This is the first novel that has been reviewed in the six years of the Denver Journal's existence. I could hardly put the book down myself, wanting to know what would happen next. Couple all that with regular implicit criticism of organized religion – especially traditional European Catholicism – along with explicit feminist and even goddess-worship ideology, and one understands why many post-Christian readers will approve of the message and virtually all readers will find the plot riveting. It contains all the elements of a good murder mystery, enough vivid portrayals that one can imagine the events depicted on location – especially if one is familiar with France and Britain – and bite-sized chapters that regularly end with a 'cliffhanger' begging one to read more. It is well-written, fast-paced, with surprising turns of plot and intrigue regularly shocking readers, especially when they start to think they have things figured out. It didn't take me very long in reading this book to understand why it was the number 1 bestseller on the New York Times list of fiction for a large portion of 2003. in this novel are accurate' is, however, highly inaccurate! It is true that the author has worked hard to describe accurately the contemporary European locations, including city layouts, buildings, and artwork, in which the plot is set. It is true that there are such organizations as the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei. That is important to remember, especially after the statements on page 1, which move the work slightly into the arena of historical fiction, but only slightly.

The most important word in this entire book is the noun in the subtitle this is a 'novel' – a work of fiction.

The da vinci code novel