The Da Vinci Code sucks. Really. It does.

By MIKE ARGENTO

Apr 20, 2006 —

All of you people who have read and absolutely love "The Da Vinci Code," do yourselves a favor and go do the Sudoku right now. Seriously. It'll save you, and me, a lot of aggravation.

I know a lot of you absolutely love this book and positively can't wait to see the movie, directed by Opie and starring that guy from "Bosom Buddies," you know, the tall one. I know a lot of you have read and re-read the book and have discussed it online and at gatherings and have pushed it on your friends and colleagues like a bad cold. You've read all of the associated volumes produced to help people figure out the code - more on that later - and you've followed the news about some Catholics being upset that the book and the film portray the church like some kind of grand conspiratorial force that Oliver Stone, one day, may reveal as being behind the Kennedy assassination.

And I know a lot of you think this book is among the icons of modern literature, along with that book by the guy Oprah hates, and is a cultural phenomena the likes of which we haven't seen since that guy from "American Idol" was hospitalized with a bowel obstruction.

And I know a lot of you believe that, deep down, perhaps the book contains some larger truths and clues about the meaning of faith and existence and the nature of God and all of that.

Knowing all of that, I have one thing to say about "The Da Vinci Code."

It sucks.

I realize that's strong language for many of you. You should have seen it before I deleted some adjectives.

Now, I know the book has sold something on the order of a bazillion copies in hardback and has spawned a cottage industry of debunkers and bunkers and theorists and lawsuits and such. I've read the reviews that call it a "taut thriller" and "a page-turner" and "a roller-coaster ride" and all of that. It's been a best-seller for, what, 6,000 years or so.

But it wasn't until recently that I succumbed to its lure, urged on by the slightly annoyed woman who lives with me. She stayed up until 2 a.m. one night to finish the thing and said I should read it.

I did.

And I can say it was like a roller-coaster ride - albeit one that takes two weeks to finish and is stopped periodically while the ride operator smacks you upside the head with a baseball bat.

It was terrible.

Terrible doesn't do it justice.

It was, flat-out, one of the worst books I've ever read. It was an affront to the English language. It was insulting and moronic and insipid and ... did I say it sucked?

If you are one of the six people who hasn't read it, let me tell you what it's about.

This guy is killed at the Louvre by a mysterious and possibly evil albino and the cops call in a Harvard professor who's an expert in symbolism to consult about it because the Harvard expert on symbolism was supposed to meet the dead guy, you know, before he was killed and all, and then a stunningly beautiful cryptologist with the French police arrives because the French police apparently have cryptologists on staff just in case an investigation needs some cryptologism, or something like that.

And then, they suspect the Harvard professor of having something to do with the death of the old guy at the Louvre because the old guy at the Louvre left behind a coded message for him and then the fun really starts.

People run around, drive around, visit Swiss banks in Paris, hang out with some old crippled guy who may or may not be a good guy or a bad guy, all the while being chased by the possibly evil albino who beats himself and wears this thing on his leg intended, I'm guessing here, to prevent him from having evil albino thoughts about stunningly beautiful cryptologists who just happen to, maybe, be the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Jesus.

Anyway, the plot, such as it is, has to do with the church - or a sub-branch of the church called Opus Dei - trying to hide evidence that Jesus had kids with Mary Magdalene, which would, I don't know, do something really awful because people just couldn't handle it.

Something like that.

Of course, it sounds really, really interesting, but it really isn't.

Mostly because Dan Brown is so incredibly terrible.

First off, he must've taken some kind of writers' correspondence course that teaches that foreshadowing is a way of keeping readers turning the page. So he foreshadows everything. Even stupid stuff.

It's like this: He'll write something like: "Robert Langdon reached into his pocket and felt the tubular form. What could it be?" And then, after eight pages of Langdon wondering about it and speculating on its nature and how it relates to the possibly evil albino chasing him we learn that it's a Tootsie Roll.

Drove me crazy.

The other thing is this Robert Langdon is supposed to be some kind of super-genius, but page after page, he reveals himself to be - how shall I put this? - slower than my mentally challenged greyhound. The guy's an idiot. He spends a lot of time trying to figure things out and in my imagination, he bears the same expression as my dog when I have lengthy discussions about current events with him.

And the dialogue! It was soap-opera-esque.

And the flashbacks. At one point, I counted a flashback inside a flashback that was inside yet another flashback.

The thing that really got me, though, the moment at which I realized that I was wasting hours of my life that could have been doing something productive, such as clipping my toenails, the moment at which I actually screamed aloud and hurled the book across the room came in a later chapter in which the author describes the potentially evil albino as "the great albino" to indicate that he was a large, potentially evil albino.

It was, even in the context of larger suckitude, a craptastic moment.

Did I say I really hated this book?

Now, I just know I'm going to be dragged to see the movie.

At least the movie will have that Forrest Gump guy in it. He seems about right for it. Mike Argento, whose column appears Mondays and Thursdays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints, can be reached at 771-2046 or at mike@ydr.com.