The Last Few Days...

First thing Monday morning, the day before The Lost Symbol was to go on the market, TG woke to find that Janet Maslin of the New York Times had broken the embargo and reviewed the book. A rave review, as a matter of fact. TG is so annoyed by this (the fact that she broke the embargo, not the fact that she gave it a rave review) he's not even going to link to her column. The LA Times broke the embargo as well. Usually when this happens, the publisher leaps in with denunciations, demanding an investigation as to how the offenders came by their copies. Since there has been nary a peep from the publisher on this score, I can only think they gave them the book themselves. If true, shame, shame, Doubleday. I would be glad to publish comments from them, or anyone else, on where these reviewers got their copies. And the reasons why they chose to break the rules. (Yes, yes, TG is not really so naïve to not know why they did what they did, but he'd like to hear their mewling, self serving justifications.)

TG stood patiently on line at Borders at midnight, along with six other hardy souls, bought his own copy and headed home to stay up all night to read. The fact that the reading session lasted till two AM is testament to the fact that the book is good, lively enough to keep an aging reviewer in his seat with open eyes. At least for awhile. Then it was up at six AM the next morning and back to the book, which was finished by 3:00 PM, the reviews written and sent in by 4:30. A long day, but the book held up well.

Because TG was contracted to supply the reviews to several outlets, the review of the book won't appear on these pages for at least several days. They pay, and, alas, TG readers do not, so let's give them some time to get their money's worth. I will at least say, the book is damned good. It was sort of like examining the original of something that one usually sees as a copy on a street-vendor's cart. The two items look pretty much alike, but after awhile one realizes that the workmanship on the original is far better than the knock-off. TG has reviewed scores of Da Vinci Code-like thrillers, and many of them have been very good, but there's no question that Dan Brown owns the franchise and perhaps others who follow in his path should start looking around for their own ideas in the future, no matter how tempting and lucrative it might be to ride along on the bandwagon.

And so, after a good night's sleep, TG rises again to resume his old life, where there are no mega-blockbusters in sight, no embargoes and no cheating newspapers, just a long line of thrillers, waiting for someone to sing their praises or point out, gently, sadly, their flaws and infelicities.

Thriller Guy Hoaxed! Anonymous Poster Confesses! “I made it all up!”

Duped Book Blogger Forced to Use Four Exclamation Points!

“In a stunning development, the seemingly contrite anonymous R confessed in an e-mail that he not only made up the supposed secret concerning the publication of Dan Brown's new book, The Lost Symbol, but that he couldn't even remember what he said the secret was. The receiver of this misinformation - nationally known book blogger Thriller Guy - suspects that alcohol was somehow involved in R's, now discredited, original post.”

OK, OK, enough of this. Yes, it's true, late last night an e-mail arrived from R saying he was just having a bit of fun with TG. Fortunately, I didn't reveal the supposed secret, though I'm going to now because I still think it was an inspired guess. The main part of R's comment is in the entry following this one, a rather rambling missive that ended with the words, redacted in yesterday's entry, - concerning the eminent publication of The Lost Symbol - that... “the new book is only part one of two.”

It explains so many things, among them...

1. Why it took Dan Brown so long to write the book. Most authors in this genre (TG included) take about a year to research and write a novel. Brown took, what? Five years? Of course you have to factor in his time used spending some of the money he made with DaVinci Code, that's got to eat into your writing day, but even then that's a long time to be sitting in front of a computer working on the same project. (Spare me the snooty comments about how long it takes to write a non-genre, “literary” novel.) So, if you believe R's secret, Brown took that long because he was writing not one, but two books.

2. It solves the problem facing Brown of what he was going to write for his next book after The Lost Symbol. The answer was The Last Symbol: Part II. And now it would already be written and he wouldn't have to go back to work for many more years, if ever. (This is a subject of an upcoming blog: If you made a ton of money with a book would you ever bother to write again?)

3. The publisher is pretty much guaranteed to make even more money than would be the case if it was just one book. People would buy the first book because they're ravenous for another Dan Brown product, and if he didn't blow it completely he'd have them on the hook for the second part. So instead of selling 5 million copies (first printing) they would sell ten million just by having Brown write long, which he is wont to do anyway. Most writers will tell you that the hard part of writing is coming up with a new idea for a book. Once you're into one and rolling right along, you can write it forever. The trick of the thing is figuring out how to end a book.

See what I mean? It's a brilliant publishing idea, and if R was in the business (he's not, turns out he's a lawyer) he'd be sitting in a shiny new office for having come up with it. So there you have it, the whole, tawdry story.

OK, TG is tired of writing about Dan Brown. For those of you who can't get enough of the subject, the Washington Post has two giant articles today on Brown and the book, and Perceptive Poster Joel sends in this link to a website where the real secrets of the book are revealed:

http://thecryptex.com/news/washington-traitor-redux