The Da Vinci Code

Dan Brown's new thriller will have a global first print run in English of 6.5 million copies. The book trade is predicting that The Lost Symbol, featuring symbologist Robert Langdon, will be the most successful novel published since records began.

"This movie, without being particularly good, is nonetheless far less hysterical than 'Da Vinci,' wrote A. O. Scott in the New York Times. "And as an exercise in extreme mass-market tourism 'Angels & Demons' gives pretty good value." 

Father Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor) rushes around the Vatican arranging meetings and conferences in Angels & Demons. And then you remember: He looks like Georg Gänswein, the secretary of Pope Benedict, known to Italians as Bel Giorgio.

One of the controversial things Dan Brown claims is that the villains of his story, the Illuminati, used the English language. They picked it because it was relatively obscure 400 yeas ago. Their enemy was the Catholic Church, which used Latin.

By choosing a language not widely spoken, the Illuminati effectively ended up with a kind of secret code.

Decrypting The Da Vinci Code means finding solutions to brain-teasers, anagrams and number puzzles. The ultimate solution is connected with the location of the Holy Grail, a mysterious society called the Priory of Sion and the Knights Templar.