Harvard symbologist and religious expert Robert Langdon is summoned to the Louvre by the French version of the FBI, led by Captain Bezu Fache, and soon discovers that he is the prime suspect for the murder of a historian he had been scheduled to meet with.

Assisted by a French cryptographer and government agent named Sophie, Langdon is challenged to decipher a chain of cryptic codes and puzzles, all the while trying to stay ahead of Fache's lawmen in a chase through the Louvre, out into the Parisian cityscape, and finally across the channel to England.

Can Langdon and Sophie decipher the nature of a secret dating back to Leonardo Da Vinci, and even earlier, before those responsible for the historian's murder add them to their hit list?