A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Are they emissaries from the Vatican, bent on foiling the Grail-seekers? From Opus Dei, the wayward, deeply conservative Catholic offshoot bent on foiling everybody? Or any one of a number of freelancers bent on a multifaceted array of private agendas? For that matter, what exactly is the Priory of Sion? What does it have to do with Leonardo? With Mary Magdalene? With (gulp) Walt Disney? By the time Sophie and Langdon reach home base, everything-well, at least more than enough-has been revealed.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. It’s not all that easy to identify these enemies. The game now afoot amounts to a scavenger hunt for the scholarly, clues supplied by the late curator, whose intent was to enlighten Sophie and bedevil her enemies. Aided by the murdered man’s granddaughter, Langdon flees the flics to trudge the Grail-path along with pretty, persuasive Sophie, who’s driven by her own need to find answers. And besides, they don’t particularly like Americans.
The evidence against Langdon could hardly be sketchier, but the cops feel huge pressure to make an arrest. When Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon-in Paris to deliver a lecture-has his sleep interrupted at two a.m., it’s to discover that the police suspect he’s a murderer, the victim none other than Jacques Saumière, esteemed curator of the Louvre. At least, so the story goes in this latest of Brown’s exhaustively researched, underimagined treatise-thrillers ( Deception Point, 2001, etc.). But if your heart belongs to the Roman Catholic Church, the Grail is more than just unholy, it’s downright subversive and terrifying. If you’re a member of that most secret of clandestine societies, the Priory of Sion, you think yes. In an updated quest for the Holy Grail, the narrative pace remains stuck in slo-mo.īut is the Grail, in fact, holy? Turns out that’s a matter of perspective.
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