Book News
Dan Brown’s next.
Ramping up the publicity campaign for Dan Brown’s long-time-coming follow-up to “The Da Vinci Code,” the publisher has released the jacket art for “The Lost Symbol.”
Showing a blood-red wax seal, cryptic symbols and a shadowy skyline of the Capitol, the cover hinted at the setting for the book in Washington — “though it’s a Washington few will recognize,” said Jason Kaufman, Brown’s editor.
“As we would expect, he pulls back the veil — revealing an unseen world of mysticism, secret societies and hidden locations, with a stunning twist that long predates America,” Kaufman said.
Brown had previously written that the book would be “set deep within the oldest fraternity in history,” the Masons.
The new novel, which is being published by the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group on Sept. 15, features Robert Langdon, the protagonist of “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels & Demons.” Knopf Doubleday is planning a 5 million first print run in hardcover. A spokeswoman for Doubleday said the publisher would also release an e-book version of “The Lost Symbol.”
artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com
First Lines
Criminal Karma, by Steven M. Thomas
She was three cars ahead of us on Highway 60, headed east toward Palm Springs in a white Town Car driven by a guy who looked like trouble. We were in my new Seville STS, Reggie behind the wheel, slouched down in the leather seat, steering with one thick finger. I was almost but not quite sure she had the jewels with her, packed in one of the red Samsonite suitcases I’d seen her escort load into the Lincoln’s cavernous trunk. People think gangsters drive Lincolns to show off thier money, and they do, but they also like them because there’s room for multiple bodies in the trunk. Not that the lady was a gangster. That was us. Kind of.
We’d tailed her from the canal-side house in Venice, through downtown and East L.A. Ahead of us to the right, the Puente Hills bulked up in the golden light you get on winter afternoons after the Santa Ana winds have whisked the smog out to sea. With black-and-white dairy cattle grazing on the green slopes, the hills reminded me of an oil painting I’d seen while casing a Santa Barbara museum a couple of weeks before — a plein-air vision of SoCal’s vanishing rural past worth $30,000, more than the rolling expanse of portrayed acreage was worth when the painter committed it to canvas in the 1920s.
“What’s the plan?” Reggie said.
I’d explained everything to him the night before. Either he hadn’t paid attention or he was just annoying me now because he was bored.
“We’ll play it by ear,” I said, annoying him back.
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