I was stuck in the country reading a book called The Map - too ghastly, one of those hidden truth religious things where baddies [generally Catholic] are out to get the righteous who have kept the truth a secret for umpteen centuries - when I saw The De Villiers Code at a Border Collie Rescue sale in Dullstroom.

The Map is designed to appeal to all lovers of The Da Vinci Code: The De Villiers Code is a local parody which is aimed at the more discerning section of the market, those who detest TDVC, so nauseous after the badly written Dan brown wanna-be [and being a worse writer than Brown is no mean feat] I seized on local humourist Tom Eaton's slim volume with cries of joy.

Topical humour is wonderful, and local content makes it even better: it does rob it of its universality though and the book is dated but still very enjoyable, even if references to the Kebble Art Award will be lost within 10 years. A light, slight but very able spoof which does require knowledge of the original to work, although you could probably get away with just watching the film.

Come to think of it, the film with the egregious Tom Hanks, is almost as bad as the book but takes less long to get through; two hours of your life you'll never get back as opposed to six hours. In the South African version, Langdon is transformed into the slickly irresistible and incredibly multi-talented C.C.Langa who, with the assistance of a beautiful police woman, tracks down a brutal killer and an ancient secret.

Good fun. ( )