A report on a new mystery novel that is breaking sales records in adult fiction.
American writer Dan Brown has another mystery in the bookstores and people are buying the new novel in record numbers. "The Lost Symbol" takes place in Washington, D.C. over a period of just twelve hours. The mystery is linked to the Freemasons, a secret men's group with an estimated five million members around the world. Faith Lapidus has more.
FAITH LAPIDUS: Dan Brown's earlier novel, "The Da Vinci Code," was a very popular book. Knopf Doubleday Publishing group released the book in two thousand three. It has since sold eighty million copies in forty-four languages. It was made into a popular movie. All in all, "The Da Vinci Code" made Dan Brown a very successful writer. What that novel did not do, however, was sell one million copies the day of its release. That honor goes to Mister Brown's third book, "The Lost Symbol," released on September fifteenth. By the end of its first week on the market it had sold two million copies. The record-breaking sales made "The Lost Symbol" the fastest-selling adult novel in history. The book entered The New York Times Best Sellers list at the number one position on September twenty-fifth.
The novel re-visits the character of Robert Langdon, the Harvard University professor from Brown's first two books. Langdon is an expert on symbols. In this mystery, he is presented with a symbol tattooed on a hand. The symbol itself might not be so unusual. But the hand has been recently disconnected from its body.
So begins the novel that takes Langdon hunting and hurrying around Washington, D.C., through museums, monuments and government buildings. The professor has a vicious enemy to defeat, central intelligence agents to outsmart and a friend to save.
That friend is Peter Solomon, the secretary of the Smithsonian and a Freemason. The Freemasons are a secret society hundreds of years old with a whole set of mysterious symbols that only they know.
Book critics have been mixed in their reviews of "The Lost Symbol." But, the Web site Internet Movie Database reports that the book is already "in development" to be a movie. You can learn more about other popular authors who spoke at the National Book Festival on the Special English program "This is America" on Monday.
