I finished listening to Dan Brown's prequel to The DaVinci Code several days ago. Several folks had mentioned that this was the better book, so I gave it a shot. This is the sort of book that I was lamenting to my wife when she said I should stop reading crap.
Spoilers follow:
The last third or so was frustrating because I knew who the bad guy was, but the characters didn't. I had suspicions early on, I mean, who would old man Vetra tell and feel like he had not broken confidence? Well he's a Catholic priest, obviously he spilled the news in confession. So it's got to be somebody in the church. Besides... "Janus?" The big bad names himself after a two-faced god. Betrayal is the name of the game.
By "water" I was absolutely certain. The "Phantom Menace" made sense. The Camerlingo (sorry about spelling, I'm going by audio only) had opportunity since he had last been with the four preferiti. Why didn't any of the Swiss guard notice that they never came out of the tea, by the way? When he starts using the media, his method of operation matches Janus'. With his big speech, his motive of wishing to leapfrog tradition into the papacy is revealed.
I know that the reader of a mystery novel has an advantage over the characters since he knows that the culprit is someone we have already met, but Brown just doesn't do much to misdirect the conscious observer.
I was kind of disappointed that the villain was just delusional and not a comic-book criminal mastermind. I wanted to find out that he had actually set the bomb that killed his mother and so had a history of being the only survivor through determined action and not leading of the spirit.
Posted to Books at January 7, 2005 8:44 PM