Cracking The Da Vinci Code

I have not read The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. After reading the very well written and sourced article on Karl Keating's Catholic Answers website, I will probably not read it and am saddened by its popularity.

Here is an excerpt from the article:
The problem is that many of the ideas that the book promotes are anything but fact, and they go directly to the heart of the Catholic faith. For example, the book promotes these ideas:

-Jesus is not God; he was only a man.
-Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene.
-She is to be worshiped as a goddess.
-Jesus got her pregnant, and the two had a daughter.
-That daughter gave rise to a prominent family line that is still present in Europe today.
-The Bible was put together by a pagan Roman emperor.
-Jesus was viewed as a man and not as God until the fourth century, when he was deified by the emperor Constantine.
-The Gospels have been edited to support the claims of later Christians.
-In the original Gospels, Mary Magdalene rather than Peter was directed to establish the Church.
-There is a secret society known as the Priory of Sion that still worships Mary Magdalene as a goddess and is trying to keep the truth alive.
-The Catholic Church is aware of all this and has been fighting for centuries to keep it suppressed. It often has committed murder to do so.
-The Catholic Church is willing to and often has assassinated the descendents of Christ to keep his bloodline from growing.

Catholics should be concerned about the book because it not only misrepresents their Church as a murderous institution but also implies that the Christian faith itself is utterly false.

How can I respond to the charge that The Da Vinci Code is "just fiction"?
[T]he book takes great pains to create the appearance of factuality, including placing the infamous "fact" page at the beginning of the novel. Brown has stressed the ostensible accuracy of the book on his web site and in interviews. This is not a case where an author and a publisher have produced an ordinary novel. They have gone to great lengths to mislead people into thinking that the novel has a historical basis. They deserve especially sharp criticism for this, and when criticism is made they cannot hypocritically hide behind the "It's just fiction" allegation after having made such extensive efforts to convince the reader that it is not "just fiction."