The Da Vinci Code: Chapter 12

Summary: Neveu intercepts Langdon in the restroom, warning him that he is Fache’s primary suspect in the murder investigation. She reveals the presence of the planted GPS beacon in Langdon’s jacket pocket but warns him not to remove it, lest the police become aware that he has discovered it. She also shows Langdon a piece of evidence that Fache kept from him: Saunière wrote a fourth line with his ultraviolet pen, a line that Fache photographed and erased before the symbologist’s arrival: “P.S. Find Robert Langdon.”
 
Analysis: This chapter serves to ally Langdon with Neveu. It also reveals information that readers did not have before: how Collet planted the tracking dot on Langdon in his hotel room. Brown’s descriptive language likens Sophie to a work of art: “Only her gaze was sharp, and the juxtaposition [with her soft features] conjured images of a multilayered Renoir portrait” (p. 71). This metaphor implicitly invites readers to gaze on Sophie as the characters in the novel gaze on various portraits (such as, shortly, the Mona Lisa), looking for hidden depths of significance. It is a moment that, in a sense, provides a model for reading Brown’s text: virtually nothing and no one is as it or they seem on the surface level.