by Dave Franklin

Created on: January 24, 2007   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

For a long time I resisted the urge to be dragged into the whole Dan Brown phenomenon, not being a big devourer of thrillers and without much expectation of its merits I stayed away. When I finally succumbed to the Da Vinci Code, I found that there was much to be said for the book. It may not be the most elegant of literature, its style is very much in the region of popular market pulp fiction, but I loved the fact that someone had the daring to write on such a subject. Controversy always sells, and using Mary Magdalene, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Vatican as your main reference points was always going to play host to that. Despite the fact that one side will always propose that the book is based on hidden truths and the other that it is total fiction, what remained was a reasonable thriller, set for a change in the dusty halls of academia with a backdrop of mystery that is as old as Christianity itself.

Finding myself on a long plane journey with no reading material, I grabbed a copy of Browns earlier Angels and Demons and immersed myself, again, in the mysterious world of Robert Langdon. This is the book that first gave the world Harvard professor Robert Langdon, and with the popularity of Browns more recent work, this book is being revisited by the growing horde of his fans.

Langdon's ordered world is thrown into chaos when he is asked to attend the scene of a murder. An eminent scientist has been killed violently and strange symbols have seared onto his chest. As an expert in religious iconography Langdon's conclusion is that they are the work of the Illuminati, a secret brotherhood long thought vanished, but apparently resurfaced to continue its fight against the Catholic Church. The age-old war between science and religion has been rekindled and through the course of the few days that the book covers is played out amongst the history and grandeur of the Eternal City, Rome. Against the backdrop of the choosing of a new Pope, a terrorist cell has vowed to destroy the Vatican, both spiritually and physically and Langdon finds himself in a desperate race to stop that happening. Leaving a deliberate yet subtle trail and using the media to bring the war to the worlds attention, a lone assassin is always one step ahead of Langdon and his eclectic gang of helpers. The race is break-neck through the renaissance architecture and gilded halls of Rome; the outcome of that race is the saviour or the total destruction of the biggest organisation in the western world.

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