The Da Vinci Code
By Dan Brown (Doubleday, ISBN 978-0385504201)
Decent story teller, subpar writer
Review by Lawrence I. Charters, April 13, 2013
There are a number of best-selling writers who have a talent for telling a story but lack the skills to really pull off the task, and based on the number of copies sold, Dan Brown is near the head of the class. Superb story telling skills, but at times nothing less than dreadful writing. You can blame the editor and publisher, but it isn’t their name emblazoned in gold on the cover.
What could be a riveting tale involving high energy physics, Papal politics and history frequently comes to a screeching halt because of clumsy language, hackneyed situations, and logic loops. Forget all the complaints about historical and scientific inaccuracies; this is a story, and the author has license to invent. But craft? If the author lacks the craft, it behooves the editors and publishers to add some.
Update
This was one of the first novels I ever read on a Kindle, and the file was corrupted. All the text was there, but every seven to ten pages, things were out of order, with the text strewn in a stair-step on the page for a paragraph or two. Strangely enough, mentally dealing with this problem added to the mystery of the novel.
Alas, an update to the book fixed the problem.