My First Thriller. Review on The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

At last I read one of the most talked about book in last decade “The Da Vinci Code” and understood why it received such a warm acceptance from the book readers from all over the world. Dan brown has written a highly intelligent thriller with loads and loads of twists and turns in it, that will keep the reader hooked to the book and run through the pages as fast as one can. The way he has blended the fact and fiction is unimaginably brilliant. This book being my first suspense thriller, I was just bowled over by the experience that I had while reading this book and those two days when I was literally reading, reading and reading just this book without even doing my day to day activities.

The book has made a damn lazy reader like me to complete it in one and half days. I haven’t read any of Brown’s books before but I have to admit that he has mastered the genre of suspense thriller and set a bench mark which will be very hard to reach by any other author. Thriller writing just looks like a simple technique which I was able to figure out from reading the novel i.e, a consequence of an incident will precede the actual incident in the narration. Using this technique, every chapter leaves a lot of question which make us to proceed further, and also we feel more than satisfied when we get a surprising, convincing and an intelligent answer for the questions we had in previous chapters. But beauty of this book is that each and every answer which comes very soon in following chapters leads to another big question.

After reading first 200 pages, I thought so many things have been revealed already and what Brown has in store in another 400 pages to follow. But my god even after that, the knot grows more and more complex without any loose end. Each and every puzzle, riddle, anagrams and the clues are brilliantly interwoven with the symbols in the paintings and the structures of monuments.

One concept that I was shocked and surprised to know was the PHI concept and the vital role that is plays in every God’s creation. However, to me the real identity of Teacher (is suspected Captain Fache) is far more surprising that the truth of Holy Grail. The author was able to completely draw the reader into the book and to the illusionary world where the story actually happens, by his vivid description of places, structures, shapes, symbols and paintings.

One good example of his lively narration is the use of time freeze technique at a most crucial point of the narration. We could visualize a camera rotating 360 degrees around the object falling down which has all the secrets on which the whole story revolves around. My heart beat was racing fast as Langdon and Sophie are about to open the Holy Grail and involuntarily I sat down on the bed (in which I was lying down before and reading the book) in that moment out of tension, thrill and curiosity.

The story travels in three parallel paths initially which were told in alternate chapters, I felt such jumping between tracks as a speed brake for the main story but when all the parallel paths converges to a single path all those slightly boring parallel tracks gets meaning. Everything is perfect in this book. Only one thing that itches me is what Fache and Collet and other guards were doing when Langdon and Sophie were searching for their next clue in “Oh, Lame Saint” room in a very relaxed pace. It would definitely not take so much time for the police to return to Louvre from US embassy as it is said that it is very close of Louvre.

Some may get disappointed on the vague ending of the novel but for me the thrilling journey was for more important than where it actually ends and so it didn’t bother me much. On the whole, the book has become an all time classic of its genre and my appreciation doesn’t count anymore. So right now waiting for the Hollywood version of Da Vinci code and also for the sequel of the book on which Dan Brown is working on.