Perseus Distribution is handling sales as well as fulfillment for Grupo Planeta's Spanish-language edition of The Lost Symbol, El Simbolo Perdido. Planeta is printing 1 million copies for worldwide distribution of the $24.95 trade paperback. On sale date is not until November 24 because translation of the book could not begin until the publication of the English-language edition. Perseus reports "big commitments" from Barnes & Noble, Borders (including Borders in Puerto Rico), and such big box stores as Wal-mart, Target, and Costco.

Too many popular authors (Thomas Harris) have followed huge hits (The Silence of the Lambs) with terrible embarrassments (Hannibal). Mr. Brown hasn't done that. Instead, he's bringing sexy back to a genre that had been left for dead.

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Mr. Brown was writing sensational visual scenarios long before his books became movie material. This time he again enlivens his story with amazing imagery. Some particularly hot spots: the unusually suspense-generating setup for Katherine’s laboratory; the innards of the Library of Congress; the huge tank of the architeuthis; and two highly familiar tourist stops, both rendered newly breathtaking by Mr. Brown’s clever shifting of perspective. Thanks to him, picture postcards of the capital’s most famous monuments will never be the same.

Graciously allowing that she doesn't "deny Dan Brown any of his success", Picoult went on to pick apart Brown's best-known novel, declaring that the code-cracking thriller left her cold. "I don't understand the hype over such a poorly written novel - and as an author who does all her own research, I know better than to consider myself an expert in the field I am writing about," she told the Daily Mail. "I believe this was an error in judgment for this particular author."

Picoult, sales of whose page-turning novels of families in crisis have made her a worldwide bestseller, is not the first author to have given Brown a rough ride. Salman Rushdie memorably laid into him in lecture he gave at the University of Kansas in 2005, during which he called The Da Vinci Code "a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name". The Booker prize winner did, however, allow that despite the apparent paucity of his writing, Brown should be allowed to continue living. "Even Dan Brown must live," he said. "Preferably not write, but live."