Just came over this extremely hilarious article, well thought out and written with tongue so firmly planted in cheek it showed through the writer’s ear – Dear Dan Brown, All Eyes Are On You.

Janet Maslin was brilliant – she pointed out an immensely daft trend happening recently – that of Dan Brown copycats. With blurbs like “is more shocking than anyone could ever have imagined.”; “may solve one of the greatest riddles of history” as well as “from the fog-shrouded mazes of Venice to the beautiful Big Sky country of the American West.”

Here’s a little quote:

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.

Thanks, Dan Brown. Look what you started. In the sound-like-Brown genre the stakes are high, the scruples are absent and the copycatting is out of control. Your own next book (possibly to be called “The Solomon Key,” arrival date unknown) is already a pre-sacred text.

Oh, i’m a fan already. :)