THE DA VINCI CODE -- Dan Brown

Doubleday -- hc
New York -- 2003 -- 454pp
ISBN: 0-385-50420-9

Conspiracy. The Catholic Church. Leonardo DaVinci. Throw them together for a best-selling book.

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It's easy to see why this book became a best-seller. The writing is crisp, the plot intricate but accessible, it relies heavily on page-turning chapter endings and rather stock characters and a couple of "red herrings" to keep the reader in surprise.

It was a rather quick read, but some of the very basic premise got off to a rather shaky start, in my opinion, but without it, there would have been no book.

One of the basic problems with a book like this is that you can really make anything in to a code to explain some kind of mystery. I could take my birthdate and use it to prove how the numbers mean whatever I want them to. And so this book does it with numbers and paintings, etc.

I predicted what was going to happen, and who the "bad" guys really were, even though some of the misleads were pretty convincing. Still, there were moments that were fun and I did get caught up in the page-turning action at times.

This is far from being a great book, but few best-sellers are.