Awful. The only redeeming feature is that it’s short. This claims to be a parody, but it’s not—it’s more like a string of schoolboy jokes awkwardly stapled onto a knock-off Dan Brown plot.

We’re told “the secretest secret of all is about to be made unsecret…” but what follows is just the tired formula of a Harvard professor (here, the unfortunate Richard Wangley) running around European landmarks, this time Prague, spouting symbolism trivia while being framed for a murder. Beige clearly wants this to be witty, but the humour never lands—it’s all limp asides and cheap gags about Wangley’s turtleneck and paunch.

The book tries to wink at you with “isn’t this silly?” self-awareness, but it ends up being less parody and more painfully unfunny imitation. If you’re expecting clever satire, keep looking.

If you pick this up, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

This felt strangely out of its time. And yet with its comments about Trump, very much of this moment.

I remember reading books like this, but not for a good decade. A parody of books about secret societies and academics caught up in global conspiracies.

Unfortunately, it can't seem to make up its mind as to if this is a parody of Da Vinci Code, or spy thrillers in general. There are lots of nods to Da Vinci specifically - a character who exists only to obey the orders of those he follows, the whole main character, the chase through a city - but then it swerves into making rather ham fisted jokes about Mission Impossible, The Bourne series and so on. The problem is they sit so oddly against the rest of the book that they feel thrown in for the sake of it.

The characters also aren't great. Yeah its a parody, but did the main character have to be so unlikeable, and everyone else so flat? Or completely pointless to the story?

I did smile at some of the jokes however, there were a couple of good moments within it. The museum scene for example, or the Irish pubs.

To the right person, this is going to be great, it just personally wasn't for me.