Dateline NBC's Secrets behind 'The Da Vinci Code' did a good job of reiterating the truth about a hoax that forms the basis for Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. The program mentioned that several books were based on the hoax of Priory of Sion, but the only one shown was Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, published in 1982, which unmasked the perpetrator, Pierre Plantard. Between that debunking and Brown's recent hoax came a riveting novel by Katherine Neville
The Magic Circle contains all the elements to appeal to a wide readership without resorting to an attempt to trick an ingenuous public with an unsigned pseudo-historical Foreword, recalling Yann Martell's Life of Pi. Neville included romance, mystery, codes and clues, and a millennial time line. The not so hidden clues that all these Christian conspiracy fictions are similarly based are mentions of the Crusades, Merovingian kings and bloodlines, and the Knights Templar (always good for a grail chase).
Brown's novel is a hoax because on page one you'll find "fact: The Priory of Sion, a European secret society founded in 1099, is a real organization," but a quick Googling of the terms shows it was, indeed, not a fact but a well-documented fiction. That, and the fact that Brown's introduction was unsigned, suggesting that it was as much fiction as the rest of the book, should alert anyone's inner skeptic.
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