A well-wrought conspiracy.(Book Review)

The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown; Corgi Books, 2004, $19.95.

IT HAS LONG BEEN a staple of fiction that conspiracy theories sell. In the modern era, we are well aware of conspiracies through such media as The X-Files and Alias on television (not to mention The Prisoner), SMERSH in James Bond, and Le Carre, Forsyth and Tore Clancy. Espionage novels in particular thrive on a good conspiracy.

Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, while not quite as erudite as some reviewers have claimed, is based on a well-documented conspiracy based on a French organisation called the Prieure de Sion. Its leaders have apparently included such luminaries as Leonardo, Botticelli and Jean Cocteau. The better known, though still mysterious, Catholic organisation Opus Dei, long a staple of conspiracists, also features prominently. Signs and symbols are adduced, examined and analysed, and a satisfying page-turner is the result. However, the underlying themes of the book, which most reviewers seem to have missed, give it an interest that the latest Tore Clancy or Robin Cook seem to lack.

These themes lift it above the standard airport novel. And it must be remembered that this is a novel--a fictionalised account which just happens to use real organisations and historical figures to give it dramatic veracity. The novel operates within its own constraints and rules. Though Leonardo da Vinci is a real person, and the analysis of his portraits interesting and thorough, he and other historical characters are drawn to the specifications of the dramatic mise-en-scene.

Though many may wish to, The Da Vinci Code is not to be used for anything except a springboard for some esoteric thought, or for pure entertainment. Like most good novels, it does make you think. The author does not direct you to think the way he does: one gets the impression he prefers the radical view, rather than the standard one. Opus Dei gets a reasonably balanced description: one character says it has its share of pious, godly and genuine men, which the main character finds a generous interpretation.

The breadth of research seems impressive--the works of Leonardo, the symbolism of Disney films (though he does repeat an urban legend about The Lion King which is demonstrably untrue), modern literature, Arthurian studies, Freemasonry and pagan religiosity all pass under Brown's gaze, though readers familiar with the territory will not be unduly surprised.

The foundations of Christianity have been under siege for around 250 years. The rise of modernism so threatened the Catholic Church that not only was a papal decree issued against modernist thinking--an extraordinary measure--but priests were trained in the methods of modernism, so that they might use those methods to more effectively dispute its more humanist, rationalist claims. This was a disaster for the church, with many of its best minds abandoning the church for alternatives. Renan's Life of Jesus and Nietzsche's claims about God's death were other fruits of modernism. Darwin's survivalism supplied Marx's opiate, if only indirectly.