I read The Da Vinci Code the way you look at a riddle in a frame: everything is in plain sight, you only have to know where to look. Dan Brown writes novels like puzzles — art history, symbols, and a pace that will not let you put the book down before midnight.
One thing connects us: the belief that images speak. In Brown’s books every fresco is a clue; in mine, every photograph is a question. Reader and viewer do the same thing — they look for a hidden order in what they see.
I read him for the pleasure of the chase: Florence, the Vatican, crypt after crypt. And for that moment when a symbol from a textbook suddenly turns out to be the key to the whole story.