Okay, who HASN'T read the DaVinci Code?
How about it's prequel, Angels and Demons?
For the sake of economy, I'm going to talk about both of these overwhelmingly popular recent novels in the same posting, simply because neither of them probably deserve a entire posting to themselves.
Don't get me wrong. Taken strictly on an entertainment level, both of these novels succeed in moving you along at break-neck speed from one cliff-hanger situation to the next and their formumatic happy endings indicates that this is only the beginning of what will likely become a fairly long franchise for the Robert Langdon character.
I'm not a big stickler for verisimilitude in a story - after all, fiction is supposed to be make-belief, and for that genre of writing the more wild the tales become, the better they get.
So let's give these novels their due. They're an entertaining summer-time read.
What I don't like about these novels is that they're sloppily written and horribly contrived. This is especially the case with the DaVinci Code, where at one point an entire chapter had to be dedicated to explaining why a previous scene that didn't make sense (the locked in the car-trunk scene) could have been plausible after all.
I noticed in the movie version, that screen writer did some serious reworking (successfully so!) of the plot to iron out some of difficulties Mr. Brown created in his novel.
Angels and Demons, while just as strained in some parts, seems at least to show a bit more cohesiveness and is the better of the two.
So, if these novels are so poorly written, then why has Dan Brown sold a gazillon copies of each of these books?
Firstly, bad writing sells just as well as the good...ask John Grisham about that if you don't believe me.
Secondly, controversy is GOLD for a writer, especially when you go after a religion. Remember "The Satanic Verses"? How about "The Last Temptation of Christ"?
Of course you do.
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