Customer Reviews

The Dick Cheney Code: A Parody

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This is a book that one can truly laugh outloud while reading, only if they've met the following two criteria: 1.) they've read the DaVinci Code and 2.) they are up to speed on all the happenings in Washington, DC and the political arena. If you have not met these two criteria, then the book will not seem as enjoyable or as funny.

The author has brilliantly masterminded a way to incorporate the similar twists from the DaVinci Code into a political thriller/parody. This is an easy reading, which can be read in one sitting (well, depending on how many times you have to stop reading because you're laughing so hard...) and is well worth the time!

From page one, "The Dick Cheney Code" surpasses "The Da Vinci Code" whose peculiarities it caricatures. It's not only civilized, clever, and well written, but also -- and this is crucially important, because these days it would be easy, with what's going on inside the Beltline, to succumb to despair -- it's delightfully funny! A good laugh is hard to find. As Norman Couisins would attest, Henry Beard has contributed to the health of the nation by offering this delicious parody just when we need it.

This hidden message found on the back cover of the book tells exactly why this book is so funny. That is, Beard perfectly parodies The Da Vinci Code taking many stabs at Brown's style. The book even starts by mentioning what organizations are real like Brown does.

From a political standpoint, Beard definitely has a liberal slant. He takes many jabs at the Patriot Act and President Bush. While he does have make fun of John Kerry's flip flopping, the needling is far less than that of the President.

Beard's overall writing style is nothing great. He jumps around a bit and does not fill in many details. Nor does Beard try overly hard to write a coherent and absorbing story preferring instead to rely on the strength of the parody.

From this point of view he succeeds marvelously. If you find Dan Brown's writing to be somewhat predictable and long winded then you will find great joy in Beard's novel. Beard will even point out extra flaws in The Da Vinci Code and Brown's overall style.

Although one prerequisite for reviewing a parody might be actually to have read the work parodied, Henry Beard's "The Dick Cheney Code" ("TDickCC") mercifully gives some respite from the dirty work of having to read "The Da Vinci Code" ("TDaVC"), work that this reviewer wouldn't wish on any worst enemy he hypothetically happened to have. --Not that anyone on our terrestrial surface, barring a few deaf-and-blind sorts, can presently be ignorant of the basic skullduggery-plus-cryptic-investigations-shows-us-that-Jesus-gets-it-on-with-Mary-Magdalene-thank-you-Lenny-Da-Vinci-&-"Mona-Lisa" plot of TDaVC.

The respite comes because of two main points. First, Beard, by his scathing and frequent asides about how ludicrous the plot twists in a conventional thriller like TDaVC are, reveals to us what a waste of time and money it might be to become yet another sucker coming to see Dan Brown's circus in TDaVC. Second, the relevance factor which TDickCC has, about the turpitude and sinister machinations of the Cheney/Bush administration and also about the upcoming election. (As for TDaVC, Jesus "schtupping" Mary Magdalene is hardly irrelevant, either, but the malevolence of the present American government is probably far more likely and provable than any alleged dalliance between a messiah and a possible whore.)



Henry Beard, by the way, is no stranger to bearding the Bush administration, cf. his (co-)authoring of the 2003 comedic illustrated book "Where's Saddam?" He puts this experience to superb use in skewering Cheney and his cohorts royally, including a take on Rumsfeld's mock-Hamlet "pose a question and answer it myself" speech pattern. Beard also uses his Latin expertise (he has written several books on that hardly-dead language), and also pig-Latin expertise, in creating codes for his characters to use. Finally, he draws on the example of his most famous work, the 1969 "Lord of the Rings" parody "Bored of the Rings" (co-authored with Douglas C. Kenney), for the general boffo style of ruthless and silly funmaking he uses in order to mock and awe in grand style.

Speaking of borrowing from earlier works: Beard apparently lifts from materials as varied as "A Matter of Honor" (by Britain's now-disgraced "Lord" Jeffrey Archer), a 1986 thriller about how a newly-discovered secret treaty deeds Alaska to Russia--not a prospect that Cold War-era America would relish--; and a novel whose name I can't remember, of about 25 years ago, in which an unearthed tank in Normandy reveals evidence that Eisenhower et al. made a literal deal with the Devil in order to beat the Nazis.

More details might reveal too many TDickCC plot twists, but this present author may at least note that Beard does clever things with the materials noted above, and Beard adds hilarious twists to them _re_ the "gay marriage" controversy. ...It would be remiss not to mention here the similarities of TDickCC to the plot and style and paranoia of "The Manchurian Candidate"; --maybe either "The Halliburtonian Candidate" or "The Skullbonian Candidate" would not be a bad subtitle or alternate name for "The Dick Cheney Code". (In TDickCC, Harvard man Beard loves to roast Yalies like Skull-and-Boners Bush and Kerry, and Yale flunkee Cheney; however, Beard wisely spares his male protagonist the embarrassment of being a Harvard graduate, as doing so would follow the way in which Dan Brown "inadvertently" dishonors Harvard by making his male protagonist in TDaVC a Crimson grad.)



TDickCC does evince some problems in execution, and also problems with tawdriness. Talking about skimpily clad models giving some nearby males "hard information" down in their Speedos is simply too stupid and unimaginative to do credit to a smartie like Beard, who is capable of better. Beard himself notes on the back cover that TDickCC is "slapdash", and it does read that way at times, including leaving Cheney himself without any truly grand finale in a work whose cover shows a spectacularly toothy and ugly photo of the Vice-President. (Note: The author of this review may have used the same photo several months ago in making a T-shirt, also featuring Bush and Ashcroft, and labeled "Yale-Qaida: Terrorizing the World Since November 2000.")

However, the flaws in TDickCC are relatively minor. Beard even shows himself a fair hand with action scenes, including details of how to kill people with Predator-launched missiles and how to crack safes, etc.

Perhaps the best feature of TDickCC, though, is Beard's racialization of the plot; with a black female protagonist, and a middle-aged Tiger Woods-type figure who saves several protagonists in a very funny way, not to mention tie-ins to Thomas Jefferson's slaveholding, the Louisiana Purchase, and the 2000 Florida election debacle, Beard offers a surprisingly resonant alternate interpretation of American history, if not quite that of his near-namesake Charles Beard ("An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution", 1913): suffice it to say that racial and social justice come off as pleasingly strong undertones, or even overtones, in a "mere comedy" book like TDickCC.

Thus, despite TDickCC's problems, the work still gets 5 stars for its audacity---ripping off "The Da Vinci Code" and calling it "The Dick Cheney Code" may beat even "Janet Reno's Dance Party" for sheer and original offensiveness---and for its moral undercurrent. In the humor Olympics, though TDickCC's execution is flawed, Beard's gymnastic maneuvering is so difficult, or at least unexpected and wild, that allowance must be made for any slight slips from the balance beam. As gaily frolicking as some of the Founding Fathers he places in an entirely new light, Beard both breaks and re-uses the "Da Vinci" mold to give us something as pleasantly and inspiringly ridiculous as Dan Brown's work is ridiculouly ridiculous.

I picked up this book because I had just finished The Da Vinci Cod by Don Brine, which was another parody book parodying Dan Brown's original. I thought the Da Vinci Cod was a better book than this one.

The Dick Cheney Code starts off as a parody of the story in the Da Vinci Code, though this book takes place in the Smithsonian rather than the Louvre. Our hero is William Franklin, a dimwit professor who is working on a blockbuster book called the Monticello Code. The heroine is Sandra Hemmings Dumont, a descendant of Sally Hemmings, the slave of Thomas Jefferson who allegedly was also his mistress. But almost as soon as the story starts, in quickly heads into a different direction, the characters and scenes don't even resemble what happens in Dan Brown's book.

The first part of the book is funnier, because it replays some of the scenes from the Da Vinci Code, but with ridiculous dialogue and absurd plot. The second half of the book isn't as good. It doesn't parody the Da Vinci Code at all, it isn't even recognizable as the same story. The story degenerates into complete silliness, which makes it less funny. For example, one chapter has Richard Nixon appear from hell to lecture to the assembled heads of the evil cabal that controls the world - Henry Kissinger, Dick Cheney, Queen Elizabeth, Greenspan, etc. This doesn't make a lick of sense, it is just inserted for cheap laughs.

I guess that is why this book is not as funny as the Da Vinci Cod. That book at least came up with a story to tell, with a mocking version of the Da Vinci Code. In this book, there are a lot of easy shots at the Bush administration, but the jokes are too obvious (Bush is really a nitwit!) and the story is incoherent. If something is going to be a parody, shouldn't it at least resemble the original in some sort of ridiculous, distorted manner?

This book is a combination spoof and satire. The spoof aspect is in play because it follows a plot line similar to "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown. It is satirical in the sense that it lampoons the Bush administration and how it has conducted itself. In the most significant cases, the actual names of the perps are used. Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Karl Rove, John Ashcroft and Antonin Scalia all appear in the book. Then there are many made up and hysterical names such as special agents Fine and Dandy, the two great preachers Jordy Weevil and Pug Buggerson, agent Sandra Damsel, Virginia Senator Richard Kydd, Native American Quick Brown Fox and lobbyist Hale Hardy.
As is the case in "The Da Vinci Code" there are two main characters who are engaged in tracking down a murder case. The codes in this case are trivial, what makes them funny is that the characters take them so seriously. My favorite scene is when Dick Cheney is trying to enter a secret chamber where he is joining the remainder of the cabal controlling the world. Queen Elizabeth, Henry Kissinger, Alan Greenspan, David Rockefeller and Rupert Murdoch are already present. The secret knock is of course, "Shave-and-a-haircut, two bits."
There is an enormous amount of very funny satire in this book. However, like the best of the genre, it is necessary to have a great deal of knowledge about recent affairs in order to understand all of it. For example, there are references to the "Skull and Bones" secret society at Yale. The relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his slave girl Sally Hemmings is a significant part of the plot, if you know nothing about that relationship, then it will be difficult to untangle the plot. Nevertheless, if you understand the references, this book is hysterical.

They being the five young Americans who went to Vietnam in place of Dick (5 deferments) Cheney. There's absolutely nothing wrong with getting five deferments, unless you subsequently become a politician and send other people's sons and daughters off to war.

A book that mocks the overblown and utterly derivative The Da Vinci Code and Dick Cheney at the same time simply has to be worth a read. I managed to force myself through the mind-numbingly predictable TdVC only to discover that it had taken literally all of its ideas from countless books that had been spouting the same 'revelations' for at least two decades. While it is definitely an advantage to have read The Da Vinci Code, I'm sure this book would be highly entertaining even as is.

Seriously funny... which is probably an oxymoron. But then, let's leave Rumsfeld out of this.

By the way, Mona Lisa means Ra Isis.