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Da Vinci Code
By Dan Brown
The Grand Master of the Priory of Sion, Jacques Sauniere, has been murdered by Silas, disciple of a mysterious man called The Teacher, who wants to find some documents that will shake the Catholic Church to the core. The police summon Robert Langdon to help crack a code left near the body. Sophie Neveu, a police cryptographer and Sanuiere's granddaughter, soon gains Langdon's trust.
The code leads them to the Mona Lisa, where Jacques has written another code, which leads them to the Madonna on the Rocks, behind which they find a key. The pair trick the police and escape with the key, trying to figure out the riddle of the key. The key opens a safe deposit box in the Bank of Zurich whose number was part of the first code near Sauniere's body.
Inside the safe deposit box, they find a cryptex, a device purportedly invented by Da Vinci for transporting secure messages. Attempting to open it without the correct code destroys the message inside. The box the cryptex is in includes clues on how to open it.
Meanwhile, Silas has followed instructions that Sauniere gave him at gunpoint to a dead-end, and realizes he has been tricked.
Langdon and Neveu, while avoiding the police, get the cryptex open, but it only contains a second smaller cryptex and a riddle. They take this cryptex to Langdon's friend Teabing, an expert on the Grail. Teabing, secretly, is the Teacher that hired Silas.
Teabing is taking advantage of a Catholic group called Opus Dei, which desires to find the Grail, to obtain backing from them. His plan is to reveal the Grail to the world personally. Teabing summons Silas, but then thwarts him personally, to gain Langdon and Neveu's help in solving the riddle of the second cryptex.
Langdon figures out the truth behind Teabing, and solves the riddle of the second cryptex, removing it's contents in secret before destroying it right in front of Teabing. Teabing gets arrested, and Biship Aringarosa of Opus Dei, who was working with Teabing, informs the police of Langdon and Neveu's innocence.
Silas is fatally shot by the police, Aringarosa arranges for the family of Sauniere and the other murdered leaders of the Priory of Sion to be cared for, and Langdon helps Neveu solve the final riddle; the location of the Holy Grail.
They believe the Grail is in Rosslyn Chapel, but this is another dupe. They do learn, at Rosslyn, that Sophie's family is more extensive than she realized, and that she is a descendent of Jesus Christ himself.
Langdon secretly deciphers the true location of the Holy Grail (beneath the Louvre), but decides not to tell anyone.
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