Product Description

Something fishy is going on in the world of artistic scholarship. How can there possibly be a link between the hidden cod of Leonardo Da Vinci's paintings and the over fishing of the North Atlantic fish stocks? Could it be that Leonardo Da Vinci, the greatest genius of his age and inventor of the photocopier and mouse mat, had a chilling insight into European Union Fishing policies. Only one man can find out. Robert Hangdog, international scholar, master spy and action hero. Oh and Bezu Fish.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #828894 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

About the Author
Adam Roberts is 39 and Reader in English at London University. His first novel, Salt, was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. He has also published a number of academic works on both 19th century poetry and SF.

Customer Reviews

Lazy and disappointing, seemingly rushed into print.
After Adam Roberts's magisterial parodic take on the world of Tokieniana, I eagerly opened The Va Dinci Cod in the hope of reading a literary and intelligent parody of the publishing sensation which itself is in fact neither literary nor intelligent, the appaling Dan Brown techno-religious thrillers epitomised by The Da Vinci Code.

The book starts well, (although for some reason neither Roberts nor the author of the Asti Spumanti Code seem to have noticed that every single Dan Brown novel begins in the same way, a prologue within which the first victim is actually in the throes of his own violent death). The usual Roberts hallmarks are there - the author's footnotes painfully explaining a normal English idiom as a means of highlighting the strangeness of it, the highlighting of something of an afterthought by the original author as being rather more significant. For example, believe it or not but in the Da Vinci Code, when describing its hero Robert Langdon, it actually states that he looks a little like Harrison Ford - a clear hint to Hollywood. So Roberts extends this further and amusingly has his author more or less saying "anybody except Tom Hanks" - Hanks of course is the one who actually is playing Langdon in the forthcoming movie.

However, one has got a little over half way through the already quite short book before this kind of extended riff has gone by the wayside in favour of a more or less straight re-telling of the story with slightly different characters and motivations. There is nothing intrinsically funny about the idea of Eda Vinci, purported sister of Leonardo who is supposed to be the real model for the Mona Lisa.

Worst of all is the denouement, which goes on far too long, only has two substantial jokes in it, and at the very end simply stops, with no epilogue or other satisfying roundup of the plot of the book. Then there is a map of Central London with the fish shape, and an annotated picture of a codfish, both distinctly devoid of any humour. And that's it, the book is finished. The advertisements for other "Dan Brine" novels at the end that one would have expected from Roberts, are absent. In point of fact the impression distinctly given is that, unlike the Tolkien parody, very little thought has gone into making the book a complete, total and intimately detailed spoof. Instead, Adam Roberts was given a set number of pages to fill, has filled them - towards the end, almost perfunctorily - and satisfied his publisher. But not this reader.

Good but not excellent
This is a must-read for anyone who likes parodies. It's very very funny although some of the puns on names I could have come up with myself.

If anything it was a little short. Robert is an old hand at parodies now and I thought this one could have been longer. He hasn't managed to parody some of the characters and the book is poorer without them.

A lot of the jokes are related to "The Da Vinci Code" so if you haven't read that, read it before reading this otherwise a lot of the jokes will not make sense.

Funny from start to finish - a must if you've read Brown's best seller!
Having read the first line of the prologue I was already laughing!

A very light hearted spoof of the ridiculously popular Da Vinci Code. Brine (aka Roberts) does a very good job of adapting the characters (who include Jacques Sauna Lurker and The Exterminator), places and events to put together an easy read, single sitting, novel. Largely following Brown's format, Brine develops his own unique version of `the conspiracy' and Brown's "writing style".