A lot of otherwise intelligent people think that this book has a truth to offer, in large part, I think, because they want to believe that the Catholic Church has been hiding the deep dark mystery that Jesus was one of us. It taps into a pseudo-intellectual/anti-religious streak.

So Brown, who isn’t even much of a writer for God’s sake, gets away with misinterpreting Gnosticism, inventing what happened at the Council of Nicaea and repeating the admitted frauds of a French con man.

If I could write fiction, I’d make millions.