I liked the satire of creative writing programs in The Plot but had mixed views of other aspects of the story in a book likely to turn up on a lot of holiday wish lists: https://medium.com/p/e183cd41ac25
December 4, 2021
February 25, 2010
2010 Delete Key Awards Finalist #4 – ‘The Whole Truth’ by David Baldacci
From David Baldacci’s The Whole Truth (Hachette/Vision):
“To say that this hit the earth like a molten-lava tsunami would have been the grossest of understatements.”
A “molten-lava tsunami”? Is FEMA prepared for one of those?
Read the full review of The Whole Truth.
The Delete Key Awards finalists are being announced in random order, beginning with No. 10, but numbered for convenience. This is finalist No. 4. You can also read about the Delete Key Awards on Twitter at @janiceharayda.com. The winner and runners-up will be announced on One-Minute Book Reviews and Twitter on March 15.
August 16, 2009
7 Questions and Answers About Dan Brown’s New Book, ‘The Lost Symbol,’ His First Novel Since ‘The Da Vinci Code’
Is it a conspiracy? Dan Brown has said little about the plot of The Lost Symbol, his first novel since The Da Vinci Code, which Doubleday will publish on Sept. 15. And while his publisher has been releasing cryptic teasers on Facebook and Twitter, these may read to the uninitiated like excerpts from a North Korean auto repair manual.
Here are some answers you don’t have to decode:
1. What is The Lost Symbol about?
The Lost Symbol brings back the fictional Harvard professor Robert Langdon, the protagonist of The Da Vinci Code, a thriller based on the premise that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a child whose descendants became kings and queens of France. Langdon again tangles with codes and secret societies – this time, in a plot that unfolds over a 12-hour period. He first appeared in Brown’s Angels & Demons.

The cover of the U.K. edition of "The Lost Symbol."
The cover of the British edition of The Lost Symbol shows, as the Belfast Telegraph described it, “a key surrounded by flames and bearing a Freemasonry symbol above Capitol Hill, suggesting the action will unfold in America’s seat of power.” The slightly different American cover – which also shows the Capitol Building – supports this idea.
2. What is the “lost symbol” in the title of Brown’s book?
The BBC News reported that the novel is “believed to focus on freemasonry, with the lost symbol of the title a reference to a ciphered pictogram in an ancient book called The Key of Solomon.”
3. What about Leonardo da Vinci? Will he have a role in The Lost Symbol?
Da Vinci or his legacy will have a substantial role unless Brown’s publisher has misled libraries. The electronic catalog at a consortium of New Jersey libraries says The Lost Symbol involves the following: “Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452–1519 – Manuscripts – Fiction – Cryptographers – Fiction. Mystery fiction.”
4. What else is known about Brown’s new book?
Other facts appear in the “codes, cryptic trivia, puzzles, secret history, maps” and more that Doubleday has been releasing on Brown’s Facebook page and the Twitter feed for The Lost Symbol. The publisher said on Twitter that “Robert Langdon’s next adversary will be revealed when http://www.facebook.com/DanBrown reaches 100,000 fans.” Brown had 67,686 fans on the afternoon of August 16.
5. What do you learn about The Lost Symbol on Facebook and Twitter?
Facebook member Mark Gray suggested that The Lost Symbol may involve explosive sexual tension and, to support this idea, posted a diagram of two Washington landmarks. “When the energetically (male) Washington Monument is positioned in front of the energetically (female) Capitol Dome an explosion of force is created,” he writes. He added, “An OBELISK is a male PHALLIC. A DOME is a female WOMB.”
A Facebook member named Buddy didn’t think much of the idea. Buddy told Mark: “You keep focusing on the phallus and vulva, but what do you think it means? Surely, this is not an answer. Why would you think those focused on spiritual symbolism and related philosophy would obsess about male and female organs? The effort is to affect the minds of many not magically conjure up some energy effect. What would be the purpose?”
On Twitter, The Lost Symbol has fewer followers (3,210) than Shaquille O’Neal (1,964,646) and Bon Jovi (22,685) but more than Molly Ringwald (93).
6. When can you buy The Lost Symbol?
Doubleday will publish print and electronic editions of the book on Sept. 15, 2009, in the U.S. and Great Britain. You can preorder from Amazon, Barnes and Noble or an independent bookseller that you find through the Indie Store Finder on IndieBound.
7. Are you going to review The Lost Symbol on One-Minute Book Reviews?
I couldn’t finish The Da Vinci Code, so I’m not going to buy The Lost Symbol. And I don’t accept review copies from publishers. But I give out the Delete Key Awards for the year’s worst writing in books every year on March 15 and wouldn’t want to overlook a stellar candidate. So I’ve put my name on the waiting list for The Lost Symbol at my library. We’ll see if I get it before Malia Obama goes to college.
Janice Harayda is a novelist and former book editor of the Plain Dealer in Cleveland.
© 2009 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
www.janiceharayda.com and www.twitter.com/janiceharayda
July 30, 2009
‘Princeton Wouldn’t Engage in Corporate Espionage’ — James Rollins’s New Sigma Force Thriller, ‘The Doomsday Key’
Dan Brown’s new novel, The Lost Symbol, will be published on Sept. 15, 2009, but I’m not poring over the clues its publicists are scattering on the Twitter feed for the novel: I couldn’t finish The Da Vinci Code. So I’ve been looking into other thrillers about fraternal or ecclesiastical conspiracies, trying to answer the question, “Are any of these readable?” I found James Rollins’s new Sigma Force novel, The Doomsday Key (Morrow, 431 pp., $27), on a library display of New York Times bestsellers, and the dust-jacket copy said:
“At Princeton University, a famed geneticist dies inside a biohazard lab. In Rome, a Vatican archaeologist is found dead in St. Peter’s Basilica. In Africa, a U.S. Senator’s son is slain outside a Red Cross camp. The three murders on three continents bear a horrifying connection: all the victims are marked by a Druidic pagan cross burned into their flesh.
“The bizarre murders thrust Commander Gray Pierce and Sigma Force into a race against time to solve a riddle going back centuries, to a ghastly crime against humanity hidden within a cryptic medieval codex …”
This was not a promising beginning, so I’m sure whether I’ll read more of The Doomsday Key than I did of The Da Vinci Code. But here are a few quotes from the book that might help you decide whether it’s for you:
1. “Her methods were brutal – like murdering the Venetian curator – but who was he to judge? He had not walked in her shoes.”
2. “ ‘Great. So now we’re breaking into a prison and a tomb.’ Kowalski sank down and crossed his arms. ‘Nothing could possibly go wrong with that plan.’”
3. “’Princeton wouldn’t engage in corporate espionage.’”
4. “Gray weighed that information. The Knights Templar were considered to be the keepers of many secrets. Could this be one of them?”
5. “‘The priest should have been more careful to whom he made his confession.’”
April 13, 2009
Review of Lisa Scottoline’s ‘Look Again’ in the Washington Post
Update: When I posted this, anyone could read the review I mention below without registering. But since then, it’s been archived, and you have to log in (free). Jan
Lisa Scottoline’s 16th thriller arrives in bookstores this week. The heroine of Look Again works my profession (journalism) and in a city (Philadelphia) not far from where I grew up. You can read my review of the book in today’s Washington Post.
January 9, 2009
July 21, 2008
February 29, 2008
2008 Delete Key Awards Finalist #3 – D. L. Wilson’s ‘Unholy Grail’
Delete Key Awards Finalist #3 – From D. L. Wilson’s Unholy Grail:
“’Believe me, I doubt if the Church has a secret agency that would go around killing people.’”
“’Here’s the kicker, Charlie.’ Carlota sank into her chair and let out a sigh. ‘Professor Hamar’s husband felt so much guilt over contributing to the disease that killed their son that he committed suicide.’ Charlie smacked his hands to his head so hard he knocked his cap off.”
“A uniformed task force had been sent to the Hotel Royal and, thank God, there was no dead priest in any of the rooms.”
Is it just a coincidence that The Da Vinci Code has inspired so many knock-offs? Or could it result from a conspiracy surpressed for thousands of years?
A hat tip to Bill Peschel at Reader’s Almanac www.planetpeschel.com, which has an extensive archive of reviews of mysteries and thrillers, for this one.
The 10 Delete Key Awards finalists are numbered but announced in random order.
© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
www.janiceharayda.com
February 18, 2008
Is This ‘Da Vinci Code’ Acolyte a Delete Key Awards Candidate?
What kind of writing might qualify for one of the Delete Key Awards, given to authors who don’t use their delete keys enough? Bill Peschel over at Reader’s Almanac nails it with his suggestion of D. L. Wilson’s Unholy Grail, a Da Vinci Code acolyte that involves a manuscript said to be written by Jesus’ brother, James, and includes characters such as rogue priest who is killing others around the world and marking their bodies with stigmata.
This paperback original might seem like small potatoes compared with Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach (longlisted for a “Bad Sex” in fiction award) and Steve Martin and Roz Chast’s The Alphabet From A to Y, a book for roughly 2-to-4-year-olds that sends the message that kids are never too young to make fun of people with disabilities. But Bill noted that Unholy Grail “fights above its weight with its combination of subject matter, timeliness and powerfully bad writing.”
Here are three of my favorite Delete Key contenders from this religious thriller, chosen from a rich list that Bill sent:
“For two thousand years, Christianity’s held up pretty darn well.”
“’Here’s the kicker, Charlie,’ Carlota sank into her chair and let out a sigh. ‘Professor Hamar’s husband felt so much guilt over contributing to the disease that killed their son that he committed suicide.’ Charlie smacked his hands to his head so hard he knocked his cap off.”
“A uniformed task force had been sent to the Hotel Royal and, thank God, there was no dead priest in any of the rooms.”
You can find a review of Unholy Grail on Bill Peschel’s site www.planetpeschel.com/index?/reviews/bookreview/the_jesus_and_mary_chain/ and a blurb for it from Clive Cussler (“a tale rich with intrigue”) on D.L. Wilson’s www.dlwilsonbooks.com.To find out if the novel it made Delete Key Award shortlist, check back on Feb. 29, when One-Minute Book Reviews will announce the finalists for this year’s prizes.
© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.