Doubleday New York, 2003

You best start reading this thriller at a rainy weekend, because you won´t be able to stop before you have finished. That´s the best you can say about a thriller, isn´t it? If you read Brown´s acknowledgements you find, that he has done some serious research, and before starting the story, he also tells you the “facts”, on which he has based his novel. Another reader has assured me, that Brown is correct here, having done some research of her own. So let´s believe it. Brown is heavily indebted to Umberto Eco, of course, the unequalled master of symbology.

The author has designed his plot like a treasure hunt and the reader readily follows him. As it turns out, apart from the reader, there are four parties involved in this hunt for a unique treasure, a secret that would shake the world of Christendom like an enormous earthquake if uncovered.

Robert Langdon, a Harvard symbologist, is drawn into this story of murder and myth against his will, and it´s an ingenious young woman, Sophie (!) Neveu, who does all the real detective work. Oh, by the way, this takes place in France, mostly, so we Europeans get a nice outsider´s view of  Europe by a true American.