Dan Brown sales ‘off target’

Two more British authors have joined the throng of writers and critics castigating Dan Brown - the man behind The Da Vinci Code - for his dreadful writing style. Unafriad of 'sour grapes' accusations, Philip Pullman and William Sutcliffe have stepped in as news reaches The First Post that sales in Britain of Brown's much-hyped new thriller, The Lost Symbol, have not been as high as forecast.

Philip Pullman, bestselling author of the trilogy His Dark Materials, attacked Brown for his "flat, stunted and ugly" prose. Pullman went on: "His basic ignorance about the way people behave is astonishing, talking in utterly implausible ways to one another."

Brown's unrealistic dialogue was picked up by Sutcliffe, reviewing The Lost Symbol for the Financial Times. "Brown finds his true nadir in dialogue," said Sutcliffe, before quoting this extract from the new book:

"'Peter', she said, 'you already told me that the Egyptians understood levers and pulleys long before Newton, and that the early alchemists did work on a par with modern chemistry, but so what? Today's physics deals with concepts that would have been unimaginable to the ancients.'"

Both men acknowledge Brown's ability to crank up an exciting plot. But on the question of whether the readers deserve to be hit over the head with such leaden prose, they appear to be divided.

Pullman, who by chance is published by Random House, the publishing conglomerate which owns Brown's publishers Transworld, said: "There's nothing wrong in writing as he does, but it is not great writing."

Sutcliffe, whose last novel, Whatever Makes You Happy, was published by Bloomsbury, said: "People buy his novels because they are gripping". As a result, plausibility was not perhaps a concern.

However, he attacked Brown for talking down to his readers. "Dan Brown assumes his readers know nothing," he wrote in the FT. "He refers not to the Parthenon but to 'Athens¹ ancient Parthenon', in case you don't know where it is or whether it is old or new."

Criticism of Dan Brown's prose looks destined to run for as long as the printing presses keep rolling - i.e. quite a long time. The first print run for The Lost Symbol was a staggering 6.5 million. But if it reaches the heights of The Da Vinci Code, then ten times that number will need to be churned out worldwide.

However, The First Post has learned from senior sources within the publishing industry that despite special window displays and advance sales promotions in book stores across the country, sales of The Lost Symbol have not hit the publisher's targets. Any further, more concrete, evidence of a Dan Brown sales slump will be gratefully received at First Post Towers. ·