The Davinci Code
...of the story, he is in Paris to give a lecture on his work. Having made an appointment to meet Jacques Saunière, the curator of the Louvre, he is startled to find the French police at his hotel room door. They inform him that Saunière has been murdered and they would like his immediate assistance at the Louvre to help them solve the crime. Unbeknownst to Langdon, he is in fact the prime suspect in the murder and has been summoned to the scene of the crime in order that the police may extract a confession from him. It might be no coincidence that a John Langdon was the real graphic artist who designed the ambigrams in Brown's novel, Angels and Demons, the first of the Robert Langdon trilogy.
Jacques Saunièrethe curator of the Louvre, head of the secret Priory of Sion and grandfather of Sophie Neveu. Before being murdered by Silas (an albino monk) in the museum, he reveals false information to Silas about the Priory's keystone, which contains information about the true location of the Holy Grail. After being shot in the stomach, he uses the last minutes of his life to arrange a series of clues for his estranged granddaughter, Sophie, to unravel the mystery of his death and preserve the secret kept by the Priory of Sion. Saunière's name may be based on Bérenger Saunière, a real person who was extensively mentioned in Holy Blood, Holy Grail.
Sophie Neveuthe granddaughter of Jacques Saunière. She is a French government cryptographer, who studied at the elite Royal Holloway, University of London Information Security Group. She was raised by her grandfather from an early age, after her parents were killed in a car accident. Her grandfather used to call her "Princesse Sophie" (as is revealed later, she and her grandfather are descendants of the Merovingians) and trained her to solve complicated word puzzles. As a young girl, she accidentally discovered a strange...
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