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Don't buy Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol: read these instead
First Post writers choose books as exciting as a Dan Brown novel, but by better writers
Despite punishing reviews - Salman Rushdie famously described it as "a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name" - Dan Brown's thriller The Da Vinci Code has proved to be one of the most popular novels of recent times, selling 81 million copies worldwide.
Today, amid considerable hoopla, Brown's latest, The Lost Symbol, goes on sale. Its publishers have ordered an unprecedented 'first print run' of 6.5 million copies and it is fully expected to become the biggest-selling adult (ie. not Harry Potter) fiction book of the decade.
And yet Brown's writing is universally ridiculed by reviewers and fellow novelists. Stephen King called his work the "intellectual equivalent of Kraft macaroni and cheese". The New York Times film critic AO Scott, while reviewing the Tom Hanks movie based on The Da Vinci Code, called the book "Dan Brown's best-selling primer on how not to write an English sentence".
And while you might not expect a linguistics professor at Edinburgh University to be taken by Brown's efforts, you would not perhaps expect him to be quite this rude: Geoffrey Pullum called Brown one of the "worst prose stylists in the history of literature". He added: "His writing is not just bad; it is staggeringly, clumsily, thoughtlessly, almost ingeniously bad."
This presumably explains why Dan Brown was recently revealed to be the "most donated" author in a survey of Oxfam stores: unable to wade through his leaden prose, many readers have simply discarded his novels.
In a vain effort to put up some sort of protest at today's brazenly commercial publishing event The First Post asked a number of writers and publishers to recommend an alternative thriller - something just as exciting, but well written. Their choices are below, but if you disagree, join the debate in the comments section at the foot of the page:
ALONE IN BERLIN by Hans Fallada
Recommended by Crispin Black, Intelligence analyst
A man and woman on the Unter den Linden omnibus outwit the Gestapo - for a while - and then get beheaded. By someone who was there. Exciting enough to make an Opus Dei bishop kick a hole in Dan Brown's windscreen.
THE TWELVE by Stuart Neville
Recommended by Ruth Dudley Edwards, historian and satirical crime novelist
Every page of this superb debut - about what happens when a ruthless ex-terrorist is driven through remorse to seek vengeance for his own victims - will grip, shake, stir, shock, move, astonish and thrill you.
THIS NIGHT'S FOUL WORK by Fred Vargas
Recommended by Geoffrey Mulligan, publisher-at-large for Harvill Secker
If I can't choose The Twelve - already picked by Ruth Dudley Edwards - then anything by Fred Vargas. She has won the Crime Writers Association International Dagger three times and is one of the most interesting and intelligent writers around.
THE DYING LIGHT by Henry Porter
Recommended by David Jenkins, Tatler writer and former First Post contributing editor
A rattling good story about Governmental wickedness, disappearing intelligence experts, sassy (and sexy) lawyers, the surveillance state and villainous moguls. Beautifully written page-turner with a political core and a barnstorming ending in which, unfashionably, parliament and two peers are the heroes.
THE SINGER by Cathi Unsworth
Recommended by Rod Stanley, editor of Dazed & Confused
Tense post-punk noir thriller, with whiplash plot twists, buried secrets, and better haircuts than anyone in Brown's books. This is a brilliant second book by a stylish writer, and 100 per cent monk-free.
RAIN GODS by James Lee Burke
Recommended by Max Eilenberg, former editorial director of Secker & Warburg and Methuen
My advice: save your money and wait until November for James Lee Burke's astonishing Rain Gods, set in a territory where Cormac McCarthy meets Hannibal Lecter. With a psychotic Bible-reading killer called The Preacher in one corner, a lawman haunted by demons of his own in the other, and a deranged host of losers, dealers, scumbags and terrified innocents cowering between, this is one of the finest novels I've read in years, in any genre.
THE WALLANDER SERIES by Henning Mankel
Recommended by Matthew Carr, writer and terrorism expert
Anything from Henning Mankel's Wallander series. Mankel combines cool, effortless prose, sharp social comment and gripping plots - the perfect antidote to Dan Brownland.
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO by Stieg Larsson
Recommended by Jack Bremer, First Post reporter
Brilliant opening novel in the 'Millennium' trilogy by the late Stieg Larsson, pairing the investigative duo of middle-aged journalist Mikael Blomkvist and punk computer hacker Lisbeth Salander. The second - The Girl Who Played With Fire - was not quite as good, but still a top-drawer thriller. The third - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - comes out on October 1. Now that will be a publishing event.
THE KINDLY ONES by Jonathan Littell
Recommended by Coline Covington, psychoanalyst
Winner of the Prix Goncourt, this is a Faustian epic about the former SS intelligence officer Dr. Max Aue, caught in the web of Nazi politics. Written as a memoir, its cast of characters includes Eichmann, Goring, Speer, and Hitler. Each stage in Aue's indoctrination is depicted as he is transformed from witness to cold-blooded assassin to ruthless bureaucrat masterminding Nazi atrocities. The thriller is in the final twist of the story.
THE END OF MR Y by Scarlett Thomas
Recommended by Zoe Williams, Guardian columnist
A fabulous book, don't for a second be put off by the quantum physics, it is really more like narrative steroids than theoretical complication.
AND SOME CLASSICS:RED DRAGON by Thomas Harris
Recommended by Philip Norman, author of the recent biography John Lennon: The Life
Either this or The Silence of the Lambs - Harris's first two Hannibal Lecter novels - are more gripping than Dan Brown can ever be and also brilliantly written. Harris can turn a description of police firearms into poetry. It's when he tries to write poetry, as in Hannibal Rising, that he comes unstuck.
DOG SOLDIERS by Robert Stone
Recommended by James Delingpole, novelist and Spectator columnist
An edgy hallucinogenic novel about drugs, paranoia and hippydom in the late-Vietnam war era. Written like proper literature, but here's the important bit: grips like a thriller.
THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE by B Traven
Recommended by Charles Laurence, First Post North America correspondent
Best known as the story behind John Houston's movie starring Humphrey Bogart, this is an edge-of-the-seat journey to the core of human greed, a rat-a-rat pulp gem from an obscure literary master that is as revealing today as ever.
WHEN IT WAS DARK, THE STORY OF A GREAT CONSPIRACY by Ranger Gull
Recommended by Alexander Cockburn, First Post north America columnist
I don't think Dan Brown is all that bad, but just to be different, why not try to hunt down a copy of this. Villain: Constantine Schuabe. His plan: Prove Resurrection of Christ was faked by Joseph of Arimathea. Peak moment: terrific descriptions of collapse across world of all civilized values when London Times trumpets news that Christianity is a lie. Huge bestseller in 1904.
PARADISE LOST by John Milton
Recommended by David Cox, writer and TV producer
Beats Dan Brown on characterisation, comprehensibility, credibility, momentum and sententiousness, while coming close in religious spookiness.
THE PRIVATE MEMOIRS AND CONFESSIONS OF A JUSTIFIED SINNER by James Hogg
Recommended by Lucy Hughes-Hallett, literary critic and cultural historian
Serial killing and religious extremism, devils, doubles and a pandemonium of unreliable narrators: a book of brilliant conceits and night-black humour.REBECCA by Daphne du Maurier
Recommended by Justine Picardie, author of an upcoming biography of Coco Chanel
Wrongly dismissed as a romance, it is unsettling, potent and filled with twists - as tense a thriller as you could wish for. ·
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Comments
Quoting Stephen King to stain another author's "intellectual" capacity? Really? It's just fun fiction that happens to get some readers interested in researching history for themselves. Art is and always will be subjective. I happen to have enjoyed a few of Dan Brown's novels including Lost Symbol. Having stated that I would have to agree with Manny Goldstein as popularity mostly caters to the lowest common denominator. Take the Bible for example: Billions of us own a copy, but who among us could reasonably agree that the violence, obsenity, slavery, masogyny, etc. contained within would ever be considered a "good" thing in practice?
I agree with Vivien Tarkirk-Smith... this could well be a bi-weekly or monthly service. But why not broaden it out, so that one could have different genres such as thrillers, crime, sci-fi, historical, humour, etc. I know that they will inevitably overlap but, heh, its only a bit of fun.
the DV Code was very funny for us Frenchies especially when the heroe (sorry, can't remember his name) asks the girl (French) if she has ever heard of an obscure king named Dagobert. Every French Child knows the song, c'est le roi dagobert qui a mis sa culotte a l'envers...
I'd add to yr list all books by John Harvey and RJ Ellory
I am surprised that the reviewer did not suggest some Umberto Eco novels. I have long thought of Brown as Eco Lite. In particular Foucault's Pendulum, and of course, Name of the Rose, but even Baudolino shines next to the entire Brown corpus of pap.
For mysteries with satisfying endings (unlike any of Dan Brown's novels) try any Peter Robinson - preferably begin at the earliest. Wonderful gripping stuff!
When I am chaneling Crocodile Dundee, I love anything by Australian sardonic writer Peter Temple. But Alan Furst is great for his dark eastern post war Europe thrillers. One can smell of the stinky cheese and feel the damp.
In the Dan Brown genre but better, try 'The Last Templar' by Raymond Khoury, Macmillan. He has written for 'Spooks' too. Just a thought!
I can start a sentence with a conjunction if I want, because I can, be it 'or', or 'and', or, like, whatever. Or not.
"The Spy Who Came in From the Cold". Quite simply the best spy thriller ever written. 40 odd years old and has never been beaten.
Sorry to make the point, but there can only be TWO alternatives. As many options as you like though. I realise this is written by journalists, but it is useful to get the basics right when you write.
I suspect many of the suggestions are a little too grounded in reality to meet the craving that Dan Brown seeks to meet, which is essentially complex plot fantasy masquerading as an ostensibly more respectable literary form such as historical novel. But rather than consume this brain fattening confection masquerading as health food, perhaps they should go for something that is proudly and far more tastily a dessert for the brain, such as some classic science fiction space opera from the likes of masters such as Ian M Banks and Neil Asher.
Offering a selection of books recommended by experts is a very useful service. Why not make it a weekly feature? I found this very informative and useful - thank you.
There are probably more than 80 million holocaust deniers out there. That doesn't mean the holocaust was a good idea. If I were to suggest some reading that might shed light on the Dan Brown enigma I might choose Charles Mackay's classic 'Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds'.
Well said, Phillip Tacker, if more than eighty million people read the book then perhaps it was not too terrible.
Like JK Rowling, Dan Brown has never considered himself the equal of Shakespeare and in this time of concern about declining interest in literature and competition from other media surely anything that gets children and adults to read is to be applauded rather than derided?
Since when was it correct to start a sentence with the word 'or'?
The Harry Flashman series by the late, much-missed George MacDonald Fraser, all 12 books. As Auberon Waugh said, "twice as good as Buchan and twenty times better than Fleming."
I would like to proffer CS Lewis's advice: for every new book you read, read one or two old ones. The old ones that have survived are timeless classics, not the dross which is recycled to Oxfam in a few weeks. How about 'The Epic of Gilgamesh' (Babylonian), 'The Story of Sinuhe' (Middle Kingdom Egypt), 'The Iliad' (8th century Greek), 'The Odyssey' (follows from the Iliad), or 'The Republic' by Plato - lots of good fables interspersed and not as difficult in the philosophical dialogue as you might think, whatever you do read any version except the appalling Benjamin Jowett translation. Or you could try CS Lewis's sci-fi trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength), or Charles Williams spiritual thrillers, 'Descent Into Hell' or 'The Place of the Lion' are good. Or 'The Worm Ouroboros' by ER Eddison for a Shakespeare-meets-Tolkien fest. Or Herodotos' Histories - mostly good stories. Go on, go back in time, enjoy yourself.
Ironic, innit, that the words of support for Dan Brown come from a man incapable of spelling the word reader.
Try the C J Sansom novels set in Henry Viii time. Well written historical thrillers.
Yes, well in response to all you pseudo-intellectuals, Dan Brown has appealed to over 84 million reders, so he must be doing something right!
Jealousy strikes again.
For those interested in historical novels - the series by Celia Boyd about Tom Fletcher, a young Worcester surgeon during the English Civil War, the most recent of which is "ACT OF REBELLION". Addictive good reading.