Excerpts from Dan Brown’s Latest
October 10th, 2006I knew that keeping this blog updated would eventually turn me into a respected member of the publishing industry. I’ve found that it has happened much earlier than I expected. How, you ask? I recently obtained a few leaked chapters from Dan Brown’s latest book. They were leaked by a reliable source who works for his publisher (I can’t give his name, but he works in the Leaking Department). I’m super excited to be the first to release these chapters as a sneak peek to a novel that is scheduled for release in March 2007. Its working title is Serial Riddler. It follows two computer programmers as they fall into some sort of international intrigue. I hope you enjoy these chapters — I think it’s a real treat.
This first excerpt is from chapter one:
Drake Dantley arrived at work at 8:02, two minutes late. He had arrived at work two minutes late every day for the last ten years. Everyone at the ComputerCo office had gotten used to it. They gave him a pass because he’s the second best computer programmer in the world … second only to one person.
On this particular day, Drake wished that he hadn’t shown up two minutes late. “Bad news, Drake; the servers are down. We’ll need you to figure it out,” said his boss. Drake hated days like this. Server problems are often fixed with a simple re-boot, which is computer lingo for turning the system off, then on again. But most days, it’s more complicated. This day, it’s the most complicated and thrilling server difficulty in the history of server difficulties.
Drake was a simple man with simple goals: he wanted to be the best computer programmer he could be, and he had done it. He had a modest physique — just under six feet tall, just under 180 pounds. He was a white man. He carried three pens of different colors in his pants, but he never used them. His co-workers respected him because of his great work, but most were afraid to get to know him … except Sherry Foster.
Sherry Foster was rightly considered the best computer programmer in the world. Not the second best like Drake, nope. The best. That means she was the tops. She knew it all — BASIC, C++, Visual Basic … all of those computer languages that only computer programmers would know. If Drake was multi-lingual with computer languages, Sherry was pan-lingual. And who knew such a genius would be such a fox? Not most people.
What amazing character introductions. I wish I wrote that well. Anyway, the next excerpt I got is later in the book. This is from chapter 76, which begins on page 78:
“It seems that our old friend, Yitzhak Bortolotti, is tampering with our servers,” said Sherry.
“You mean, the Yitzhak Bortolotti who was adopted by Liberian vigilantes when he was a boy, and then became Africa’s premier computer programmer / agricultural guru?” asked Drake.
“The one and the same. He put a pretty devious worm on our servers. It took me seventy-five chapters to figure out it was from him.”
“A devious worm? You mean, like a repeating computer virus-like thing? Not the creature that eats dirt, right?” He may be the second-best programmer on Earth, but he always likes to keep things straight.
“Yes, Drake. It was so devious, it crashed our servers and left us with a riddle.”
“A riddle!”
“Yes, a riddle. You don’t happen to know the names of William Howard Taft’s children, do you?”
“No, why do you ask?”
“Because it’s an important part of the riddle. If only we knew the names of Taft’s kids, we’d be able to crack the code!”
“How ever will we find someone who knows the names of Taft’s children? He’s been dead for… I don’t know how long!”
“I know. Wait a second. Maybe we won’t find someone, but we might find some thing…”
“What are you getting at? Ooh! I know! A book! A book about Taft! That’ll tell us the answer!”
Riveting stuff. The final excerpt is from the harrowing climax:
Yitzhak ran his free hand through his fire-red hair. His soft, cotton, blue polo shirt was freshly ironed, but it had fresh pit-stains in the armpits. He pointed the gun, a .22, at Sherry, then at Drake. Drake noticed the glint of the polished steel every time Yitzhak turned the gun this way and that. It got him thinking about how shiny Sherry’s earrings are in the sunlight. Even in this stressful situation, she’s all he could think about.
I should save her… and us… so that we don’t get shot… Drake thought to himself. But how? Suddenly, he remembered Yitzhak’s greatest weakness.
The publisher didn’t give me the ending, but my guess is that Drake and Sherry end up victorious and in love.
I hope you enjoyed that bit of Dan Brown writing. If you think he’s as talented as his bank account tells us, then you should thank me for alerting you of this awesome new release. I can’t wait until I can read the whole thing!
-Darrell
October 11th, 2006 at 9:16 pm
I’ll put my thoughts about this guy in writing for once. I’ve read three of his books, and it’s come to my attention that I should have been reading Michael Crichton the entire time. I didn’t mind the first two, but by the third one (which was too long) I realized that there wasn’t anything new to what he was doing. Dan Brown writes in a psuedo-science fiction a la Crichton. It’s really too bad that he’s only half as smart and has nothing close to Crichton’s talent, otherwise Americans may have been coaxed into reading something worthwhile.
Here are a couple of comparisons:
Crichton informs us in Jurassic Park that there are some frogs that change sex when in dire need to reproduce, and this creates havoc with the dinosaurs becuase they spliced the DNA of the dinos with the frogs. Seems plausible, no?
Brown tells us that Robert Langdon can jump out of a helicopter so long as he lands in a body of water and uses his jacket as a makeshift parachute. Seems fucking stupid, no?
Crichton give us diagrams that relate to his story. Graphs and charts with axes that plot things in a scientific way. You know, stuff that requires thought to understand.
Brown has someone draw some words that are the same upside down as they are right side up. Whoa, dude. Check it out. (Now you all look like morons in the airport with your reading material un the much less readable position of upside down.)
It’s striking that the Harry Potter series that’s aimed at kids is more intelligent than Dan Brown’s ‘serious’ writing.
October 12th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
thanks for giving us that sneak peak darrell! i especially enjoyed the harrowing climax.
i also shamefully admit that i have read more than one dan brown book. but you have to admit, he is so good at writing dan brown books, that i literally cannot tell the difference between the davinci code and angels and demons. and it seems like the only thing he’s thinking about when he writes is what the movie’s going to be like. “her hair was red; a sort of symbolic and foreshadowy shade of red, and she was standing in the exact spot where the coffin used to be buried. the room was dimly lit, and if you looked into the room from overhead, you could see the faint outline of a star on the floor, and she was in the exact center.” or something. fantastic!