John J. Miller does an excellent job encapsulating the problems many have with Dan Brown’s runaway bestseller The Da Vinci Code.

I have to say this about the book’s popularity. I read it in doctors’ waiting rooms while recovering from a broken hand, and several people spoke to me enthusiastically about it, including my doctor. It was as if I had joined a mystical club. The book was a page-turner, no doubt, but I was not nearly as impressed with it as everyone else seemed to be.

The book read like a Hardy Boys novel with occultic overtones. I think anyone who took any class under NC State’s Dr. Tom Hester would stay ahead of it. I realized most of the answers to the clues before the narrative revealed them. The narrative was on about an 8th-grade level and the chapters were very small. It was a quick read, but that’s not to say it wasn’t interesting, and the very ending had a nice twist to it.

It should not surprise that Brown fabricates much of the key elements in the book. It is, after all, a work of fiction. After all, it’s a time-worn fictional device to claim that all the facts presented are true (see, for example, Gaston Leroux’s prologue to The Phantom of the Opera, or the Coen Bros.’ introduction to “Fargo”).

Those of you who liked this book, I highly recommend Foucault’s Pedulum by Umberto Eco. The book is about 15 years old now, but it is everything that is interesting about The Da Vinci Code, squared. The Templars figure highly in this book, too, but it touches on (and traces links between) secret societies across the world. Be warned: the reading level is collegiate, the chapters span more than three pages apiece, there are Latin and French quotations aplenty, and the book is about three times as long. In my opinion, it was by far a more engrossing read.