The book is a clunker, and once you start noticing it there is no way back.

The premise is great and the plot at least starts out promising, but the writing, particularly the exposition, is breathless and shallow - Paris is described barely better than Marlo Morgan describes Australia. The book features a Harvard professor of "Religious Symbology" trying to make sense of the death of a Louvre curator - who turns out to be the grandmaster of a secret society guarding the 2000-year old secret of the Holy Grail. If released, this secret will bring down the Catholic church, so the curator is killed by a conveniently available self-flagellating albino monk on orders from the Opus Dei. Of course, the men are handsome, the women beautiful, and the obligatory nod to new age and political correctness is included in the form of a cryptographer heroine and a half-baked "legend of the goddess" running theme.

Worst, however, is the writing. The shallowness of the descriptions is nothing short of offending. For instance, the office of the deceased curator is described, seen through the professors' eyes, as having "Old Master" paintings on the wall. This same professor is supposedly so proficient in the arts that he can recognize the "famous parquet floor" of Louvre's Grand Galerie from a Polaroid (Polaroid? In this day and age?) when pulled out of bed at 2am. Would such as person describe the paintings by anything less that the artist' name?

Brown wallows in cheap suspense tactics - such as having the characters look at something, express their horror, and then move on without telling the reader what the horror is. This makes the book feel like a cable newscast, where the anchors are forever saying "next, ...." and you know you have to suffer through three commercial breaks and trivial news items before you come to the meat, which by then has become stale since you have guessed it anyway.

(rest of the review at my blog.