The Worst Book Ever Written?

Ok, I had a few quid off at WHSmith to spend and it was just sitting there on the shelf, taunting me. Hopes weren’t high from the start, but to steal a line from Peter Ustinov, the author Charles Brokaw “sets himself incredibly low standards that unfortunately he fails to meet”. That is not to say that this book was totally superfluous; it did provoke a reaction. It simultaneously elicited despair, incredulous laughter, fist-biting nausea and oddly enough, hope.

Brokaw (pseudonym) is a college educator from the Midwest of America with a healthy interest in advanced weaponry, aviation, international politics and pulp fiction. It’s worth stating that I am not embellishing or using hyperbole while recounting this literary experience; the book is actually written like this, with no hint of irony.

Obviously this is an unashamed cash-in on the success of Dan Brown. I haven’t read or seen The Da Vinci Code, but I imagine both authors mine the same over-subscribed seam: Indiana Jones-esque adventuring, conspiracy theories, pretty ladies and the evil Roman Catholic Church (with its limitless resources) taking over from the Nazis as chief antagonists. But let’s get to the hero of the piece.

Now, I’m not accusing Brokaw of projecting in any way, but judge for yourselves: Meet Thomas Lourds (Doubting Thomas, Lourdes – clever eh?): an uncharismatic, unfunny, bearded, narcissistic, sexually amoral (although cripplingly attractive) professor of ancient languages. Lourds happens to be the foremost authority on languages, ancient and modern, as well as being astoundingly good in bed. Readers will be frequently reminded of this. Every woman in the book has the hots for him and even the token gay man also finds him undeniably handsome. And as if he wasn’t brilliant enough already, Lourds is helpfully surrounded by a herd of weak stereotypes to elevate him further.

The two main female protagonists (and default love interests) are Leslie Crane, an English TV documentary producer and Natashya Safarov, a Russian police investigator. Needless to say, both of these women are incredibly attractive themselves and both end up sleeping with Lourds, who is just great. However, lest we accuse our hero of misogyny: Lourds’ first love will always be his work, women are a bonus.

We then have the Machiavellian Cardinal Murani, who within the first five pages of appearing, breaks the finger of a young boy who tries to pickpocket him (he’s the bad guy, if you hadn’t guessed). His role basically involves sitting resplendent in his Vatican chambers, whilst sending Mafia thugs after Lourds & co. Of course this is until the climax, where the constant bungling of his subordinates forces Murani to get directly involved and inevitably, snuff it in the final scenes.

To say that the characters are flawed I suppose is true, the flaw being that they are unconvincing and unsympathetic lumps of wood. On occasion, Brokaw suddenly remembers their nationalities and injects a bit of nauseating dialect. The Brits sporadically come out with flurries of “shag”, “bollocks” and “bloody”, not to mention “wanker” (which I think some Americans really don’t understand the meaning of).

As for style, The Atlantis Code is perfectly readable, if somewhat clunky and inconsistent. However, there are many painful “thesaurus” moments, where words are awkwardly crowbarred in for the sake of linguistic variety. The dialogue meanwhile is dull, wooden and unrealistic.

Nevertheless, the story rockets on apace with shoot-outs and car chases, before pausing to go a bit Mills and Boon, in which the intensely erotic word “starkers” is used to devastating effect. I had to put the book down at that point.

If you have trouble keeping up with the zippy, jet-setting storyline, then panic ye not. Readers are handily told the date and location of the action every time the narrative shifts geographically (which happens every few pages). The religious intrigue of the piece meanwhile is limited to biblical literalism, conspiracy-nuttism and next to no theological insight. It is the literary equivalent of a Michael Bay action film.

The Denouemont <Spoiler Alert – Highlight if you want to read it>
The ‘wowsa’ moment comes when it is revealed that the lost civilisation of Atlantis and the Garden of Eden are in fact one and the same. It turns out that there was an unnamed Son of God before Jesus, who was knocking around in Eden (I took to calling him Geoff Christ). But humanity being humanity, they decided to string him up and were duly turfed out of their opulent paradise by God. Cue deluge.

(of course this is all covered up by the evil Roman Catholic Church)

As no adventure would be complete without its own Holy Grail, The Atlantis Code‘s turns out to be the literal ‘Book of Knowledge’, which is unsurprisingly swallowed up by the sea in the rushed, cataclysmic finale. Still, at least the story ends with Lourds getting conflicting dinner invitations from his two female companions. What a guy.

<Spoiler Alert>

Critically speaking, The Atlantis Code falls into the vacuous ‘page-turner’ or ‘departure lounge’ category, rather like ‘watchable’ films. Yes, you get through it quickly, but that is because of its simplicity of style and unwillingness to give its audience any challenging material, in terms of plot, themes or characterisation. It is poorly researched, badly worded, typo-infested, bigoted, misogynist, full of crude generalisations and totally without irony: everything that could be wrong with a work of fiction.

Although the book is just dreadful, I felt that the greater crime was committed by the editor(s). Of course everyone should be free to articulate themselves in prose and churn out whatever guff they please. But just because the text itself is astoundingly far-fetched and gittish, that does not give the editors carte blanche to follow suit and neglect their duties. Part of me recoils in disgust whenever I come across a spelling mistake or typo in a published work and The Atlantis Code boasts several.

If anyone is interested, Brokaw has penned a sequel, masterfully named: The Lucifer Code. A quick scan of Amazon reveals that even the title is ripped off from an equally dire-looking piece of pulp. I think I may wait for that one to appear in a charity shop before I investigate.

But to end on a more optimistic note: if bilge-water like this can achieve mass publication, there’s hope for aspiring writers everywhere…