Book number 17 is The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown published by corgi and Doubleday books and is available in both Paperback and Hardback from amazon
This book has been divisive, contentious and reviled, It even led to claim's of plagiarism, which later went to court. The thing that I think everyone forgot, after reading it is that it's a work of fiction,
It's a good story with plenty or twists and turns to keep you interested, its been said by reviewer Anthony Lane it's "unmitigated junk" and decries "the crumbling coarseness of the style.", which is wholly unfair, you wouldn't expect the Enid Blyton books to be vilified in the same way. Some of Enid Blyton's works are adventure/ mysteries just like The Da Vinci Code. But no-one feels they need to tell you they don't like it or don't rate it as a book, The plain truth is it's been read by millions and millions of people who have enjoyed it, myself included. Some of the people though seem to think that they shouldn't like something because of the likes of Anthony Lane and Stephen Fry who referred to Brown's writings as "complete loose stool-water" and followed that up with "I just loathe all those book[s] about the Holy Grail and Masons and Catholic conspiracies and all that botty-dribble. I mean, there's so much more that's interesting and exciting in art and in history. It plays to the worst and laziest in humanity, the desire to think the worst of the past and the desire to feel superior to it in some fatuous way."
The story follows the attempts of Robert Langdon, Professor of Religious Symbology at Harvard University, and Sophie Neveu to solve the murder of renowned curator of the Louvre Museum in Paris, -Jacques Saunière. Who is found murdered in the Denon Wing of the Louvre, naked and posed like Leonardo da Vinci's famous drawing, The Vitruvian Man, with a cryptic message written beside his body and a pentacle on his stomach drawn in his own blood. A confusing phrase is written by the dead man on the floor along with Robert Langdon's name written below. Saunière's granddaughter, -Sophie Neveu and Langdon attempt to solve a bizarre set of riddles, codes, cryptex's and cipher's, all of which lead from the Louvre to another country in pursuit of the Holy Grail.
Being the main suspect in the old man's murder, Robert is told to run by Sophie, who goes with him, herself now a suspect she has to succeed as badly as Robert not only to prove her innocence but to catch the man who murdered her grandfather. They are left with 2 option's stay, and be arrested and possibly charged for something they didn't do or, run. Or become a fugitive avoiding the police and attempting to solve the murder of the beloved grandfather of Sophie Neveu, using the clues and riddles left by the old man in his dying minutes. They are stunned to discover a trail of clues hidden in the works of Leonardo Da Vinci. A rumoured Grand Master of the Priory of Sion, The rumoured safe keepers of the Holy Grail, Was Jacques Saunière a member of the Priory of Sion or was more than that?. Was he the current Grand Master? Of the Priory? who were said to have been the keepers of the Holy Grail dating from the very first known Grand Master Jean de Gisors (1188-1220) all the way through the years with previous Grand Masters including some of the greatest minds in history, from Leonardo da Vinci, Victor Hugo, Claude Debussy to Isaac Newton.
For the two of them to solve and unravel the mystery requires them to find the solutions to a series of brain-teasers, including anagrams, number puzzles and ciphers. The final solution is found to be intimately connected with the possible location of the holy grail.
With the addition of bucket loads of conspiracy thrown in and a sprinkling of the Knights Templar, Opus Day and the catholic church, You follow Robert and Sophie on a hunt for the Holy Grail, On the run from the French police, the catholic church and Opus Dei as well as mysterious duo of “the teacher” and Silas -an albino monk. They struggle to solve the mystery left for them by possibly the last of the Grand Masters
