Huzzah! I heart the Scarlet Pimpernel...never seen the series, but I read the book during some trip in middle school. If I was in middle school--the same time as my immersion in the Redwall series!--Orczy's prose really can't be too bad. I hope this is the series that has Jamie Bamber in it somewhere?
I haven't read Da Vinci Code either. I've told it's not worth my time for the same reasons: badly written, inaccurate, cliched...yet I feel obliged to read it all the same so I can complain informedly. Me family pushes it on me as well.