Angels and Demons

No one, including the publishers, expected The Da Vinci Code to sell 20,000 copies in the UK never mind the 2.7 million copies that have already scuttled off the shelves - the first print run was only 10,000. But the book’s success has created a huge demand for Brown’s previous work, particularly Angels and Demons which has itself already sold around 1.5 million copies.

Angels shares many of the features of The Code – a mysterious murder, a secret society, a mystery that can only be solved by an expert in symbology and a robust engagement with the Catholic Church.

It is, however, much, much more positive about the church than The Code and features two bishops who have rescued and brought up orphans. Not that the picture is uniformly positive, particularly in the suggestion that all the cardinals of the church would choose to allow people to believe in a miracle that they knew was no such thing.

Ironically, Brown seems to applaud their duplicity because it is spiritually edifying. Most interesting, however, are the passages where he explores the relationship between science and faith and brilliantly highlights the achievements of science, its idolatrous status for some and the limits of what it can offer the human heart and soul.

Brown, the Corgi publicity tells us, is the new black. But all that is brown is not black. A great page-turner.

Mark Greene