Bwahahaa, I’m an evil man plotting to take over the Catholic Church. I’m well-respected at a remarkably young age and might rise up the ranks to the top if I stick with it, but I have a far better plan! What I’ll do, right, now that I’ve secretly killed the Pope (not my father like in the book; much too complicated), is I’ll hire some guy to kidnap and murder four cardinals every hour leading up to midnight in a highly symbolic way suggesting the Illuminati are behind it. I’ll get an antimatter bomb from CERN and hide it. Then I’ll rely on other people to find it, go with them after mutilating myself to avoid suspicion, and heroically take the bomb up in a helicopter, parachuting down as it explodes. Having been convinced they’re at war, the cardinals will then of course instantly make me the new pope, guaranteed, because I’ll be a hero and a strong leader! What could possibly go wrong?

Actually, this didn’t annoy me nearly as much as The Da Vinci Code. The huge list of Brown’s glaring errors I once read ([link]) were carefully avoided, and while most of the plot was unnecessary, the real baddie was signposted from his first appearance (though I DID almost think even a double-bluff was beyond Brown) and the acting was horribly wooden, it was pretty to look at and pacey. Utter tripe, but nowhere near as painful as Brown’s novels.