h3. The Da Vinci Code: Broken

p. I've ignored the Da Vinci Code for it's short life until recently. There has been a bit of press interest in the recent lawsuit between it and a similar book but the interesting thing was the number of people that were asking whether it was true. Whether Dan Brown has a point when he says thebook is based on factual material. There came a point when I felt I had to read it and see for myself.

p. To make a long story short it's a ripping yarn, will make a lot of money in the cinema. There's a case that needed to be made that Christianity has not treated women well in any sense of the phrase, and has a lot to be ashamed of on that front. This is true even today. However, this is not the way to make it and as far as factual prose goes, it's quite patently cobblers. If this book is true, the moon is made of green cheese so the code is broken; not in the way a cipher is cracked and people know what it says. No, it's broken tautologically. The entire basis for the book is, as we say in London, well and truly bollocks.

For all the pointed critiques of scriptural vandalism, Mr Brown should keep in mind the old adage about pots and kettles as he's left a few howlers in his book. Not that people don't and shouldn't be allowed to make mistakes; these were egregious and unnecessary. See for yourself but they appear to purposefully ignore reality, or the blurb in the front of the book about being based upon factual material is bullshit. I've made a few notes (although not jotted down page numbers as I'm not that sad)...

p. In no particular order, this is an incomplete list of items that really should have been much better researched. I provide very little background on each so for context purposes, read the book first.

h3. Rome = The Church

p. Maybe it's just me but the entire book reads as a diatribe against the Roman Catholic Church. The church at Rome does have a lot to answer for, both nowadays and historically, but, in the midst of the assault on the Roman church, the book ironically gives it credibility in doing so.

p. It does this by conceding one of the most contentious, ridiculous and unsubstantiable claims the Roman church makes, that it is the only and true Christian church. As one of several branches of the church that date back to the time of Christ (including the Eastern Orthodox, Syriac and Coptic churches amongst others) the Roman church is the most visible to Westerners and the one looking the most religious. Possibly this makes it a target, as well making its pretentious claims most believable, but the Roman church is not the sum total of the Christian church. Indeed it is in relatively sharp decline and suffers a dearth of priests that will probably reach a critical shortage this century. As a target it's an obvious one but the fact that it is targetted as it is in this book detracts from any serious point the book has to make, descending, as it does, into anti-Catholic polemic. The facts, however, detract from the claims of a basis in fact that the author makes.

h3. Zimmermann and Schneier are Newcomers

p. Phil Zimmermann revolutionised personal privacy by writing PGP or "Pretty Good Privacy" encryption. Bruce Schneier wrote the Blowfish and Twofish encryption algorithms. Thing is, these two stood on the shoulders of giants that pioneered stuff far more advanced than the primitive stuff Leonardo and the Popes used. No disrespect to Messrs Zimmermann or Schneier, but there's no mention of Alan Turing or Claude Shannon without whom much of the above two's work would have been much more difficult if not impossible. For a guy who wrote a (admittedly fanciful to the point of ridiculousness) book about spymasters and their codes, Brown should know this. Respect where it's due, Dan!

h3. The world's top chefs study in Britain.

p. Mr Brown fell into an old cliche' by belittling English food. It's a cliche' well past its prime. Many of the chefs at the top restaurants in Europe studied at one of two schools in Hertfordshire in England. The place with the most Michelin stars per head of population is Ludlow, a small town in Shropshire in the West Midlands of England with three of the top restaurants in the world. Dan Brown could have found this with a simple Google search. Tsk.

h3. Franglish

p. The herione, Sophie Neveu, was supposed to have studied at the Sorbonne (another well-worn American cliche') and in London at the Royal Holloway. Oddly she continuously used American slang such as saying things like: "I'm just kidding". A French person would use the more sensuous "teasing" and a British person would say they were "winding you up" or otherwise. A person who learned English in one of those two places would never say she was "kidding".

h3. Interpol

p. Early on Mr Brown mentions Interpol as being involved in some activity or the other. This is an old trap mediocre American writers like Brown, John Grisham and others fall into through not really knowing the geographical area they're writing about intimately, or at least not having knowledgeable locals read through their manuscript first.

p. Firstly, Interpol is really nothing more than a co-ordinating communications shop between national police departments across Europe and some participating countries around the world. It's a glorified bureaucracy and nothing more. They don't have crack squads of black-clad SWAT teams standing by at a moments notice to take out international criminals from black helicopters. They might send a fax or a letter about them but it will be long after the fact, not seconds after a phone call is intercepted. And they won't be doing the intercepting; they don't have this authority. This is common knowledge!

p. Secondly, they are greatly constrained by national law and treaty as to what they are allowed to share and what they aren't. As above, if the protagonist of the book was wanted by Interpol he probably could have constructed a rocket ship out of tin cans armed with nothing more than a Swiss Army knife and flown to Jupiter and back all under Interpol's nose before they got around to starting disseminating information.

p. Thirdly, as above, Interpol is widely known for not being able to find raw meat inside a Parisian boucherie if they tried as they are an administrative bureaucracy. Much like the FBI then really. I know Ludlum and friends have worn this cliche' down to the sub-basement but a best-selling author could really do better. Then again maybe pop culture indicts its own self here.

h3. Brown really has no clue about Christian theology and Nicea

p. There is so much about this on the Internet (from reliable sources, not conspiracy fodder sites!) that I won't bore the reader with the detail. The synopsis of Nicea in the book had about as much to do with the real Council of Nicea as fish have to do with bicycles.

h3. The Gnostic Gospels

p. I suppose we'll be hearing from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion presented as fact in the next book! There were very clear reasons why these have nothing to do with Scriptural Canon (dates of authorship being a big reason!) and never will be. There's lots of material on the web why this is so; Google is your friend.

h3. The Line of Benjamin

p. It isn't royal. At least not to any Jew. 5 minutes of research, or a conversation with the local rabbi, would have done for this, but no....

h3. Ariel

p. Means "Lion of God". At least it does in Hebrew regardless of what Walt Disney might have thought. Another 5 minute conversation with the local rabbi would have clarified this.

h3. Ancient Greeks and the female

p. Sadly ancient Greeks didn't worship the female. Sounds sexy (place something far enough in the past and you can romanticise anything!) but reality is another thing. Ancient Greeks from Plato's time (6th century B.C.E.) to well after Augustine of Hippo (600 C.E.) believed women to be rather sub-human; of worth only for childbearing, and rearing, but little else. A bit of research would have turned this up, but no....

h3. Religious fabric

p. Dan Brown makes the statement in his book, "Every religion is based upon fabrication." Like the logical positivists of the early 20th century, he not only can't prove this, but his own statement fails the test. Tsk.

h3. Calling the Police

p. Ringing 999 (same as 911 for Americans, or 118 for Europeans) wouldn't connect you to Snow Hill Division, or any other specific police service department in England or Wales. All 999 calls are routed to a central answering service which connects one to the service they require (police, fire or ambulance service). Even then, in London, one would be connected to the Metropolitan Police, or nearer Biggin Hill, to the Kent Constabulary or the Surrey Police depending upon which direction one drove away. A simple conversation with almost any Londoner (I presume Mr Brown has been to London...) would have clarified this inside 90 seconds. Sheesh; unnecessarily pathetic!

h3. King's College's Mainframe

p. I actually haven't checked but I will bet the usual sum ($1, as per "Trading Places" starring Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd, of course!) that their library's search system doesn't run on a mainframe. Now why would I make this wild gesture? Because no one in their right mind would do it that way!

p. No one uses mainframes for that unless they have the time to wait on it and way too much money burning a hole in their pocket. A cluster of networked PCs? Yes. A cluster of webservers, or web/intranet-connected database servers? Yes. Even if entirely over-specified and way too much hardware for the job, these would cost 1/10th the amount a mainframe would, and would be able to search through unformatted text light years faster than a mainframe. If Google with its stacks of IPO money does it with white box PCs why would an English university with more intelligence and sense than money try and re-invent the wheel? Mr Brown has previous to this book written extensively about computers; he should know this.

h3. Roslin

p. Roslin doesn't mean Rose Line in any ancient language (other than, perhaps, pidgeon English in ancient Washington, D.C.). Nice try, and will enthuse the ignorant, but the best guess (with a bit of research done, that is) is that "Ros" means "peninsula" in various Celtic/Gaelic variants and "Lin" means "pool" as in Dubh Lin (Dublin) meaning "black pool". Hence it appears Roslin refers to a peninsular pool. Not sexy, I know, and doesn't add to the narrative but does have the inestimable quality of being supported by the evidence.

p. All in all, as said before, the book is a ripping yarn, if not a complete rip-off of other similarly themed books that have come out over the decades. The "Da Vinci" thing and the fact that it followed the Bible Code and other "code" books gives it added panache that got the ole unit shifting sales mojo rolling. But huge sales does not a coherent tale make. Enjoy the read but do so whilst remembering, "it is, really, total bollocks."