Travel Muse Magazine

Dan Brown revolutionized the historical thriller genre when his book The Da Vinci Code was published 22 years ago, in the process elevating literary tourism in the European locations featured in the novel. Now Prague is hoping his latest in the Professor Robert Langdon series, The Secret of Secrets (released just last month), can do the same for the capital city of the Czech Republic (now aka Czechia).

“Books can awaken curiosity and lead people to explore places they wouldn’t otherwise go. It’s not just Brown’s bestsellers that continue to inspire readers to travel in Professor Langdon’s footsteps from Paris to Rome and Florence to Barcelona,” the official Czech Tourism Agency wrote on their website.

Brown’s series has brought widespread public interest to topics such as art history, symbology, and religious history over the past two decades. They’ve spurred conversations about historical accuracy in art, religious traditions, the interplay between fiction and history, and, of course, “secret” (little known) societies/groups.

Da Vinci Code (2003) was more than just a book. It became a cultural moment. It was the first book I really remember everyone, and I mean everyone, talking about. It wasn’t only book nerds carrying the red-covered novel around. He tapped into the conspiracy theory-loving audience that shows like The X Files and other cultural touchstones had been warming up for years. There was true excitement when the film came out three years later starring none other than Tom Hanks. (Two of his other Langdon novels were also adapted for the screen in 2009 and 2013.)

We find ourselves in a different sort of cultural expectation about conspiracies now, having gone mainstream, if you will. While the novels lost steam as the series progressed, Robert Langdon is still a known commodity two decades later. The Da Vinci Code is still so popular to this day that the international research group YouGov ranks it at number 31 on its list of most popular books of all time, one slot ahead of 1984 and well-ahead of such classics and beloved books as The Handmaid’s Tale, Game of Thrones, and It. All together, the series has sold more than 250 million copies in 56 languages, according to the author’s website. That’s the landscape that The Secret of Secrets emerged from when it came out this year. 

While I’m a fan of The Da Vinci Code and Inferno (the fourth in the book series and third in the film series), I hadn’t read or even known that book three The Lost Symbol or five Origin (2017) existed until I heard this new one was being released, quite frankly. (By the way, if you’re thinking – wait a sec, what’s the first novel in this series if Da Vinci Code is second… that’s Angels and Demons (2000), which was the second adapted for the big screen. So, yeah. It’s easy to get them all confused.) Nonetheless, I was excited because I really enjoy and appreciate all the art history and cool places I learn about in Brown’s books that I have read. They get me going down rabbit holes about museums and places I’ve never been to in new ways, much the same way that I feel when I plan a vacation. And when I found out that Prague was Brown’s newest location, I was thrilled, as I visited the gorgeous city about 20 years ago and have longed to return ever since. In fact, I’m working on getting dual citizenship in Czechia, as it was my grandmother’s homeland. I was intrigued before I even picked up the book. It didn’t really matter what the secrets would be, I knew I’d be buying it and digging in.

So my expectations were high, but tempered, when I cracked open this crimson-covered book (definitely meant to remind us all of the DaVinci cover). The first portion of the book, I loved. We got swept along with Langdon in the romance of the beauty of Prague and plopped right into the action. We got European and Czech history paired with literary arts and architecture history, all as we ran with Langdon for his life and search for the truth. There’s plenty of inaccuracies and liberties, something Brown’s books have always been controversial for. But there’s also cutting-edge tech, science, and the thrill of solving a puzzle, especially helped with the protagonist’s photographic memory.

While reading, I jotted down notes of places I needed to see in Prague again and looked up places I’d never heard of wondering if they were real. (Yes, the Mirror Maze and R2D2 street art are really there.) I walked back to my memories of foggy mornings, exploring local cultural monuments like cathedrals, the astronomical clock and the Charles Bridge. I even bought the nonfiction book The Last Palace: Europe’s Turbulent Century in Five Lives and One Legendary House by Norman Eisen that Brown wrote about with such intrigue as he described the U.S. Ambassador to Czechia’s residence. 

But I also found myself thinking at one point midway-ish through that this book could, in some ways, be an AI-mirrored “replica” of Inferno or DaVinci Code because it seemed the only thing really original was the location and the other place-based things about the plot. (Oh the irony, given Brown talks about his disdain for AI in the novel.) Brown seemed to be following a “beat sheet” as they say for his other books, relying on his formula (complete with smart woman co-star and plot point that takes us high above the city) instead of bringing something fresh. And unfortunately, those thoughts seemingly grew as I kept reading. 

Yes, there were still many moments ahead that I was staying up late, quickly turning pages to find out what would happen. But around page 500 I was like, “this man needs a better editor!” I still had more than a hundred pages to go and I had to put it down and walk away. 

I thought about not finishing it. Did I really care what was going to happen? Didn’t I know already? Wasn’t it likely to be what seemed to happen to the other leading ladies Professor Langdon comes to rely on in his other books? I won’t tell you, as I don’t want to spoil it. But I will say I did go back after about a week and finish it up. Not because I’m above walking away from a book that loses my interest. I will shelve something with no guilt, no problem. But because I did want to know if there would be any surprises and even more so, I wanted to learn more about the real-life interesting places in Prague that Brown had decided to spotlight. Because no matter what you say about Dan Brown, you cannot argue that his books aren’t fantastic tourism fanfare, taking you on a trip from your couch to beautiful places in the world that are filled with an intriguing past and deep love affair with the beauty and multidimensionality of art in all its forms. And, yeah, I did go back and order both Origin, which is set in Spain, and The Lost Symbol, set in Washington, D.C., as the Secrets novel was good enough to clue me into their existence and I’m now looking forward to exploring the places they spotlight.

Overall rating, a solid 3 of 5 stars for The Secret of Secrets and 5 full stars for Prague and the Czech Republic for not only being a fantastic, intriguing city, but also joining in on the marketing for the book, using it as a way to reach out to potential travelers. “Brown’s book provides us with a unique impulse that we can turn into concrete experiences and greater interest in travel,” the Czech Tourism Agency’s director of Marketing and Foreign Representations Jana Štumpová Konicarová, said on the country’s tourism website. 

To read more about Prague through the lens of Brown’s latest novel, check out my article, “Literary Travel Guide to Prague inspired by Dan Brown’s The Secret of Secrets novel.”

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