Now Here's Something We Hope You'll Really Like

Yes, yes, it's two Da Vinci Code links in one day, but this one's pretty good, honest! And not just about Dan Brown: Ingrid Rowland's New Republic cover story also takes on The Rule of Four and Q. This devastating snippet, however, is all about Brown's attempt to wedge Mary Magdalene into the Last Supper:

As the Bible makes plain, Leonardo's blond bombshell is a man, the "Beloved Disciple" who has been resting in his Lord's bosom, identified by immemorial Christian tradition as the apostle John. Leonardo's portrayal of the Beloved Disciple as an attractive young blond fits right into the conventions of every other Last Supper painted in Italy in his generation. Given the villainous perversity of Brown's gay characters, all of them devoutly Catholic (the corrupt cardinal and his catamite-driver, the hit man from Opus Dei), one wonders what it is that really drives him to perform a sex change on the Beloved Disciple as embodied in Leonardo's admittedly androgynous youth. For Leonardo's famous sfumato, or "smoke effect," extends beyond the modeling of his figures to the very ambiguity of their being. 

Rowland also offers a quick snappy approach to thrillers: "Like Greek tragedies and murder mysteries, they upset society's balance in order to right it, and to re-affirm it in the righting. Like Wagner's operas, they keep an unresolved chord going for hours just to set up the sheer biological joy of its final resolution."