Thanks, Dan. Look what you started

The Da Vinci Code has spawned a generation of conspiracy-theory authors who think they can write more like Dan Brown than Brown himself.

Take a sacred treasure. Add a secret conspiracy. Attach a name well known to scholars 8212; Dante, Poe, Wordsworth, Archimedes, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, the Romanovs, Vlad the Impaler, 8220;Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,8221; whatever 8212; and work it into a story that can accommodate both the Glock and the Holy Grail. If there8217;s any room left for the Knights Templar or DNA samples from Biblical figures, by all means plug them in.

In the sound-like-Brown genre the stakes are high, the scruples absent and the copycatting out of control. Brown8217;s own next book possibly called The Solomon Key is already a pre-sacred text. The Solomon Key is so hotly anticipated that it has prompted a not-half-bad Guide to Dan Brown8217;s The Solomon Key. Its author, Greg Taylor, has conducted intriguing research into Brown8217;s supposed subject, about which there8217;s quite a trail of Internet breadcrumbs.

In May, we can look forward to something called The Archimedes Codex. The much-borrowed Brown formula involves some very specific things. The name of a great artist, artifact or historical figure must be in the book8217;s story, not to mention on its cover. The narrative must start in the present day with a bizarre killing, then use that killing as a reason to investigate the past. And the past must yield a secret so big, so stunning, so saber-rattling that all of civilisation may be changed by it. Probably not for the better.

This formula is neatly summarised on the cover of Julia Navarro8217;s Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud, a copy so blatant that it managed to knock The Da Vinci Code out of the top spot on Spain8217;s bestseller lists. It goes like this: 8220;One of History8217;s Most Sacred Treasures 8230; An Age-Old Secret Conspiracy8230;Now the Truth Is Revealed 8230;8221; Or as the cover of Michael Gruber8217;s forthcoming Book of Air and Shadows puts it: 8220;A distinguished Shakespearean scholar found tortured to death. A lost manuscript and its secrets buried for centuries. An encrypted map that leads to incalculable wealth.8221;

Similar jacket copy heralds The Alexandria Link, by Steve Berry. The cover summary says: 8220;At stake is an explosive ancient document with the potential not only to change the destiny of the Middle East but to shake the world8217;s three major religions to their very foundations.8221; Berry tosses around terms like the Order of the Golden Fleece, the Septuagint, the Magellan Billet, the Codex Sinaiticus and Cassiopeia Vitt this last one is a character with impressive ease.

One other common factor in these books is geography, or just the ability to hopscotch around the globe. So William Dietrich8217;s seemingly computer-titled Napoleon8217;s Pyramids moves from Napoleon8217;s France to Egypt as it investigates a medallion that 8220;may solve one of the greatest riddles of history 8212; who built the Great Pyramids, and why.8221; Its answer, again according to jacket copy, 8220;is more shocking than anyone could ever have imagined.8221; But, of course.

In The Mosaic Crimes by Giulio Leoni, a novelty item even for this novelty-filled genre, Dante Alighieri 8212; yes, that Dante Alighieri 8212; does detective work in 14th-century Florence. What was the meaning of the death of an artist working on a mysterious mosaic? 8220;Was it an alchemist8217;s formula to transform lead into gold?8221; asks the book jacket. 8220;Did it have to do with Antilia, wild and beautiful, who dances nightly in a tavern owned by a one-armed crusader?8221; Dante sounds suitably poetic as he thinks to himself: 8220;How many times have I questioned human perfidy?8221;

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Novelists dragoon poets at their own peril. Thus does Val McDermid shoehorn William Wordsworth into The Grave Tattoo and get him involved in the events described in Mutiny on the Bounty. Since the protagonist Jane is also a Wordsworth scholar, the book allows her to examine a curious trove of Wordsworth8217;s letters 8220;I was engaged in my poetical labours8230;8221; while finding a Wordsworth connection to a tattooed body unearthed in a peat bog. Soon Jane is speculating that the tattoos are redolent of the South Seas, that Fletcher Christian of the Bounty was distantly related to Wordsworth, and that Captain Bligh may have caused the mutiny by sodomising members of his crew. This is a modern-sounding story after all.

Which brings us back to Greg Taylor8217;s wishful guide to the would-be next work of Brown. Taylor speculates on the Eye of Providence on the Great Seal of the United States and the Masonic Apron of George Washington, among many other mysterious things. But the main challenge for The Solomon Key will not be to make ingenious use of symbology. It will be the challenge of sounding more like Dan Brown than Dan Brown8217;s imitators do.

JANET MASLIN