An Enjoyable Alternative
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"The Asti Spumante Code" kicks off in Brussels, with the murder of Gordon Sanitaire - curator of the city's Grande Bibliothèque. He proves to be the latest victim of the hirsute Stoat - so called because his hair (or, more accurately, `fur') changes colour with the season. (For this reason, he travels on two passports : one for the summer, the other for the winter). Stoat is a member of the Uxbridge Road Group, the militant wing of the English Book Guild. The Guild was founded with the aim of encouraging people to read and, although the URG's methods are extreme, they have also proved effective. Under the instructions of Brown Owl, Stoat is searching for the legendary Mûre-de-Paume, some sort of keystone.
The investigation into Sanitaire's death is headed up by Capitaine Taureau, who very quickly manages to point the finger at the book's hero : James Crack. Not only the Professor of Para-Literal Meta-Symbologist Studies at the University of Catt-Butt in Nebraska, Crack also proves to be an clueless, egotistical bore.
For those of us who hated "The Da Vinci Code", this is the easiest way of getting any pleasure from it. Brown's writing style is mocked perfectly : the chapters are ridiculously short, while every opportunity is taken to labour over the most minute and irrelevant point. Certain things are stated as fact, when they're clearly anything but true. Crack himself makes wild jumps of logic and stumbles across clues by means of blind luck rather than any form of skill. Recommended for those who read "The Da Vinci Code" and hated it.
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Almost as funny as the original!
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Parody of a novel is maybe more difficult to pull off than it might seem. Sustaining the knowing joke for more than a page or two without boring the reader can't be easy, and it's to the author's credit that he manges to do so for the most part. Thankfully, the parody is less than half the length of That Other Book.
Clements has captured the 'Style' of the original: the leaps in logic, the blindingly obvious puzzles, the chunks of irrelevant background detail, the total absence of anything resembling a believable character. All these and more are present and highly amusing. The first half of the book especially is crammed with moments which made me laugh out loud.
The worst of it is that reading the Asti Spumante Code has made me feel almost inclined to read TOB again to confirm how 'eerily' (to borrow one of the authors' favourite adverbs) Toby Clements has captured Brown's tone!
Oh no, not again....
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Depth of Research?
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Don't make me laugh, 'reader from Malaysia'
The Da Vinci Code is complete rubbish
All the 'documents' referred to were forged and planted in French libraries: the forger admitted this under oath to a judge years later and was dismissed as a harmless crank
Read a parody such as this book or the 'Va Dinci Cod' if you want a good read
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Very clever parody
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If you've read the Da Vinci Code, this is such a clever parody, with lots of jokes in French and Flemish to keep you laughing. The plot line is full of holes, but it's only after reading this that you realise that Dan Brown's book is pretty daftly plotted too. Well worth buying for the intelligent reader.
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Hilarious
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Please read this in the light hearted way it is written. It clearly states it's a parody. A fantastic story and so amusing I laughed out loud .....loads. The references to many Authors and books was pure joy. The story line as improbable as the "Da vinci Code" but more amusing. I loved it!
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