The Dan Brown Effect Goes Feral As Religious/Historical Conspiracy Thrillers Crowd Bookshops

The Secrets Of The Solomon Key Revealed (Kind Of)

By Darryl Mason

When Stephen King cracked the best-seller lists in the late 1970s with his suburban horror yarns, a fleet of imitators and knock-offs poured from book publishers across the Western world. Suburban horror yarns were suddenly hot.

When John Grisham hit the multi-million selling hardback heights with his first couple of heroic young lawyer thrillers in the 1980s, a thousand law-thriller clones crowded the new release shelves of bookstores, before falling rapidly into the discount bins.

Likewise, JK Rowling's Harry Potter sales also spurned publishers to sign up a fleet of wizardly tomes and magical adventure stories for kids, even if they were tinged with Wicca.

The Stephen King Effect. The John Grisham Effect. The Harry Potter Effect.

But the Dan Brown Effect is something else altogether.

The Da Vinci Code is clearly the publishing phenomenon of the new millennium. More than 40 million copies have been sold since its release, and this monumental success has resulted in the establishment of an entirely new category of fiction : the religious/historical conspiracy thriller.

As this feature from the New York Times explains, the formula for this new kind of thriller is fairly straightforward :

Take a sacred treasure. Add a secret conspiracy. Attach a name well known to scholars — Dante, Poe, Wordsworth, Archimedes, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, the Romanovs, Vlad the Impaler, “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,” whatever — and work it into a story that can accommodate both the Glock and the Holy Grail. If there’s any room left for the Knights Templar or DNA samples from Biblical figures, by all means plug them in.

The narrative must start in the present day with a bizarre killing, then use that killing as a reason to investigate the past. And the past must yield a secret so big, so stunning, so saber-rattling that all of civilization may be changed by it. Probably not for the better.

Unlike the Grisham, King and Harry Potter effects, the rush by publishers to cash in on the success of The Da Vinci Code has plumbed previously untapped depths of copycatting, imitation and formulaic exploitation. A fleet of new books following in the wake of The Da Vinci Code are not simply "inspired by", they threaten to be little more than cookie-cutter repetitions.

The New York Times ran a collection of the jacket copies of new religious/historical conspiracy thrillers hoping to get a slice of the Dan Brown action, and we've cobbled together a summary of how these new books are being flogged to punters via their covers.

Julia Navarro’s Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud : “One of History’s Most Sacred Treasures ... An Age-Old Secret Conspiracy...Now the Truth Is Revealed ...”

Michael Gruber’s Book of Air and Shadows : “A distinguished Shakespearean scholar found tortured to death. A lost manuscript and its secrets buried for centuries. An encrypted map that leads to incalculable wealth.”

Steve Berry's The Alexandria Link : “At stake is an explosive ancient document with the potential not only to change the destiny of the Middle East but to shake the world’s three major religions to their very foundations.”

William Dietrich's Napoleon's Pyramids : the action moves France to Egypt during Napoleon's reign to investigate a mysterious medallion that just might "solve one of the greatest riddles of history — who built the Great Pyramids, and why." The book promises the answer to this riddle will be, "is more shocking than anyone could ever have imagined.”

David Stone's The Echelon Vendetta promises to take you from “...from the fog-shrouded mazes of Venice to the beautiful Big Sky country of the American West”.

Michael Palmer's The Fifth Vial is described by the New York Times as a medical thriller about organ theft, but remains deeply in debt to Brown, as its cover promises to keep the reader : “moving ever closer to the ultimate confrontation against a deadly secret society with godlike aspirations and roots in antiquity.”

Guilio Leoni's The Mosaic Crimes features a 14th century detective in Florence who investigates a dead artist, and the mosaic he was working on when he met his end. But what's the secret of the mosaic? The novel's cover promises to answer the following questions : “Was it an alchemist’s formula to transform lead into gold? Did it have to do with Antilia, wild and beautiful, who dances nightly in a tavern owned by a one-armed crusader?”

Some in the book trade are already predicting that Dan Brown's new novel, with the working title The Solomon Key, and due out sometime in 2007, could become the biggest selling adult fiction novel in history (unless you count the Bible as adult fiction).

Due to the stunning success of The Da Vinci Code, Brown has the remarkable honour of having had not one, but two, books published promising to guide readers through the historical material that is expected to background and drive the action of The Solomon Key. A new novel not yet even published.

Naturally, both writers of guides to The Solomon Key have promised to update their books once, you know, they've actually read Dan Brown's new novel.

So what do we know about the plot of The Solomon Key?

Well, we know for a fact that endlessly lecturing history nerd Robert Langdon makes a return, and besides that, well, not much is known for certain.

But Dan Brown did give some interesting insights in a lengthy witness statement prepared for his successful defence, last year, against claims of plagiarising key details and plot lines of The Da Vinci Code.

Here's what we (kind of) know so far about the somethings that will (might, maybe) form the storyline of The Solomon Key :

Something about America's Founding Fathers and their interest in Freemasonry, particularly the first president George Washington.

Something about the Eye Of Providence which features on the United States' Great Seal, which features on the American one dollar bill, and which, by sheer coincidence of course, is about to be phased out and replaced with a coin.

Something about the Illuminati, the European collection of conspiratorial troublemakers who plagued George Washington with their plans for taking over America in the late 1700s, almost before the new nation even got started.

Something about the US Treasury and definitely something, or lots of somethings, about a host of secret societies that have entwined themselves through the dramatic history of the United States, using Washington DC as their base of power and influence.

Or something.

Here's Dan Brown from his witness statement conspiratoralising like a true professional :

Upon my return home, I started looking into the Illuminati, and what I found was material for a great thriller. I read conspiracy theories on the Illuminati that included infiltration of the British Parliament and U.S. Treasury, secret involvement with the Masons, affiliation with covert satanic cults, a plan for a New World Order....for example, the design of the Great Seal on the U.S. dollar bill includes an illustration of a pyramid - an object which arguably has nothing to do with American history.

Some historians feel the Great Seal's 'shining delta' is symbolic of the Illuminati's desire to bring about 'enlightened change' from the myth of religion to the truth of science.

Brown also expresses a deep interest in the Skull & Bones society of Yale University.

S & B is that very special club that produced the United States' first air force, that birthed the CIA and that holds the unique honour of having had both key US 2004 presidential candidates, George W. Bush and John Kerry, pass through its tomb-like interior back in the late 1960s.

As one Skull & Bones investigator wrote in 2004, "It doesn't matter who you vote for in this election, Skull & Bones wins."

Here's Dan Brown's thoughts, from his witness statement, on Skull & Bones and secret, fraternal societies.

I have asked myself why all this clandestine material interests me. At a fundamental level my interest in secret societies came from growing up in New England, surrounded by the clandestine clubs of Ivy League universities, the Masonic lodges of the Founding Fathers, and the hidden hallways of early government power.

I see New England as having a long tradition of elite private clubs, fraternities, and secrecy - indeed, my third Robert Langdon novel (a work in progress) is set within the Masons. I have always found the concept of secret societies, codes, and means of communication fascinating. In my youth I was very aware of the Skull & Bones club at Yale. I had good friends who were members of Harvard's secret "finals" clubs. In the town where I grew up, there was a Masonic lodge, and nobody could (or would) tell me what happened behind those closed doors. All of this secrecy captivated me as a young man.

Dan Brown is one of them! Or not.

Greg Taylor, the author of The Guide To Dan Brown's The Solomon Key (pre-TSK publicatin edition) theorises that Brown's new book will be set in Washington DC, which is replete with bizarre Roman Empire era architecture, cryptograms, Masonic temples and secret clubs.

Go here to read the author's lengthy explanation for what he thinks The Solomon Key will be about.

Pure speculation, obviously, for the most part, but interesting enough if you like Dan Brown's novels.

Actually, this is probably far more interesting than Dan Brown's novels.

It's a hell of a lot shorter, for starters.

In terms of style, Brown also affirms much of my 'deconstruction' of the secrets to his success.

"My favourite theme," Brown writes, "[is] codes and treasure hunts. My books are all treasure hunts of sorts". Another key ingredient, which he says was something he hit on in Angels and Demons, is the use of "hidden information and secret societies".

Brown also mentions the importance of each book being "location driven" (because they give Robert Langdon the opportunity to "teach" the reader on secrets of history and architecture), occurring at fast pace (usually within 24 hours), and the doling out of "nuggets" of surprising information throughout the book - a technique he describes as the "academic lecture" by Langdon, through which the reader is drawn into the book further and further.

This was precisely my point when I described Brown's success as largely arising out of his use of 'hidden history', giving the reader the feeling of "I didn't learn that in school".

In Brown's words, "many of the aforementioned themes from The Da Vinci Code fall in a category I often call "secret history" - those parts of mankind's past that allegedly have been lost or have bcome muddied by time, historical revision, or subversion."

It must be uniquely strange to be Dan Brown. A writer who struggled for decades to hit the bestseller lists, and then hit them like few authors have ever done before. Now he struggles to finish a new novel, which is one of the most anticipated novels of modern history.

That's if he has even finished writing it yet. And nobody knows that fact for a certainty.

A new novel that has already been pre-judged, pre-discussed and pre-previewed, at length.

If Brown has been suffering writer's block, as has been rumoured, how could he have possibly stayed away from picking up a copy of The Guide To Dan Brown's The Solomon Key?

After all, it's a book all about the things that interest Brown the most. A book that features a short discussion of all his favourite conspiracies and historical books and secret histories and forgotten symbolism and codex.

I mean, it's truly bizarre, and almost worthy of a novel in itself : A best-selling writer suffering from writer's block reads a guide to the novel that he hasn't finished writing yet and is inspired enough to finish the troubled new novel.

It's like having a book about a novel sent back from the future to a point in time when the novel the book provides a guide to hasn't even been published.

Like I said, truly bizarre.


First Chapter From The Guide To Dan Brown's The Solomon Key

New York Times : The Dan Brown Knock-Off Genre