Deep into the 'Code'

Brown's book touched off new questions about faith, said fans Lynette Hopkins, 69, and Shama, 48, who goes by her first name only. "It seems to be different from what I was taught as a good Catholic girl," Shama said. The two Van Nuys women have signed up for a tour of France, England and Scotland called "In Search of the Mysteries of the Sacred Feminine," a theme in Brown's book.

Without a movie tie-in or action-figure spin-offs, "The Da Vinci Code" still is riding a wave of word-of-mouth acclaim, though book critics have been divided. Brown's sales figures are extraordinary, considering that he was hardly a household name and that sales of adult hardcover books overall are down, according to the Assn. of American Publishers. The book has just recently begun losing its hold on the No. 1 spot on most bestseller lists and, in a boomerang effect, Brown's three previous novels have also ranked in the Top 10.

"Nobody expected this kind of international response," said Suzanne Herz, a Doubleday spokeswoman. "I think the most interesting thing that's come about is that it has almost become part of the culture these days -- reading 'The Da Vinci Code' and talking about the religious aspects."

Opus Dei, a worldwide Catholic organization that is painted in the book as an extremist cult, has prepared a 127-page response to the premises of Brown's book. The organization gets daily e-mails related to "The Da Vinci Code," said Brian Finnerty, the group's U.S. spokesman in New York. "We've received inquiries thanking us for the [website] material to, 'How come Opus Dei is hiding the truth about the Holy Grail?' ... A vast majority of people who read the book will understand that it's simply a novel but even a tiny percentage of 6 million is a lot of people."

With authority and accessible prose, Brown, a 39-year-old former English teacher, wraps a modern-day whodunit into an alternative history of Christianity. In interviews, Brown has said the underlying facts, including a secret about Jesus and Mary Magdalene, are true. Brown's take is not new, but he has introduced intriguing possibilities to the average reader, such as the theory that key Gospels were excluded from the New Testament. And he manages to tap into lingering questions of faith while rooting the story in the familiar. Clues to the mystery turn up in famous artworks and even in the works of Walt Disney.