Few novels in recent history have created quite the stir that Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code did upon its publication in 2003. Both praised for its readability and ingenuity and lambasted as blasphemous, this modern day murder mystery surrounding secret messages hidden in mast painter Leonardo Da Vinci's most famous works became widely read, pondered, and analyzed. So, it may only be natural that one might believe that Spanish author Javier Sierra's The Secret Supper is just another post-Da Vinci Code clone. However, both the writer and the critics prove that this simply is not the case.

Sierra has had a lifelong fascination with travel, writing, and revealing history's most confounding mysteries. According to Sierra's web site, it was he who located the highly controversial map of Piri Reis in Turkey, which supposedly offers "definitive proof" that Christopher Columbus was not the first person to navigate a route to the New World. Sierra also embarked on a quest for the Lost Inca Gold in Peru. He has explored strange phenomena surrounding the ancient sect of the Knights Templar in his 2000 novel Las Puertas Templarias (The Templar Doors) and Napoleon's bizarre night alone in the Great Pyramid at Giza in El Secreto Egipcio de Napoleon (Napoleon's Egyptian Secret, 2002). Now he is using his exploratory acumen to shed further light on the secrets behind the real Da Vinci code.

In The Secret Supper, Sierra takes us back to the late 15th century when Leonardo Da Vinci was very much alive and stirring up controversy amongst his contemporaries after church officials discovered subversive codes in his painting "The Last Supper." What follows is a church investigation led by Father Agostino Leyre regarding Da Vinci's intentions behind the mysterious messages he scattered in this world-renowned work of sacred art. While this plot may easily be mistaken for its more famous predecessor, Sierra had wholly different intentions in writing The Secret Supper than Dan Brown had when writing his novel. "A few pages of [The Da Vinci Code] were enough to resuscitate an enigma on which I had been already working for more than two years," Sierra said of The Secret Supper on his web site. "A mystery that, far from being solved in The Da Vinci Code, merited an exploration it had yet to receive... To accomplish this, one would have to manage something very important that the Dan Brown had never attempted: to enter the mind of Leonardo."

Sierra attempted to achieve this by setting forth on a globe-trotting journey to unveil the real meaning behind "The Last Supper." The discoveries that the author made during his treks to Paris, Milan, Rome, Florence, and the Tuscan village of Da Vinci formed the basis of The Secret Supper. "I started the field research of the book in 2001, before the publication of Brown's bestseller," Sierra said. "That was good for my work because I was able to consult files and places that today are crowded by readers of the Code."

Impressively, Sierra's own take on the mysteries swirling around Da Vinci's legacy have not been overshadowed by the imposing reputation cast by The Da Vinci Code. The Secret Supper has received wide critical acclaim from such sources as Publishers Weekly, The Guardian, and Kirkus Reviews, which went as far as to say that "Sierra is a more sophisticated writer than Dan Brown, and he offers fresh perspective on the Renaissance mind."

Apparently, it is neither the opinions of the critics nor those of his readers that are most prominently on Sierra's mind. "It took me three years to discover [the secrets behind `The Last Supper'], Sierra explained on his web site. "The same number of years that Leonardo took to create his version of `The Last Supper.' But before letting the world know his secret, even in the form of a novel, I wanted to ask him permission at his tomb... Whether Leonardo granted it to me or not, readers will now be able to judge for themselves."

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