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I want to heartily thank Janet Maslin of The New York Times from saving me the trouble of reading Dan Brown’s latest historical-consipiracy thriller The Lost Symbol.  That is, of course, unless I get a strong bought of constipation and have to make friendly with long boring stretches on the can: ”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.”

Ugh, really?  I think I just threw up a little at the thought of Dan Brown listening to Justin Timberlake while writing his latest novel. 

“The new book clicks even if at first it looks dangerously like a clone. Here come another bizarre scene in a famous setting (the Capitol, not the Louvre), another string of conspiratorial secrets and another freakish-looking, masochistic baddie (tattooed muscleman, not albino monk) bearing too much resemblance to a comic-book villain. “If they only knew my power,” thinks this year’s version, a boastful psycho and cipher calling himself Mal’akh. “Tonight my transformation will be complete.””

Paging Buffalo Bill, paging Buffalo Bill, someone is stealing your transformation meme.  If you do want to buy the book, you can do so like everyone else tomorrow morning or whenever.  It’s not going anywhere.  The book is going to fester like a boil. 

Also?  Don’t be the least bit surprised if I buy a copy, read it on the john and then come back here with a regretable, “ohmygoditsthebestfuckingbookintheentireworldyouhavetoreadthiswritenow” type of review.  Just sayin’.

The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown’s follow-up to The Da Vinci Code, is available for pre-order on Amazon and will be released on September 15.  It’s already been optioned into a movie for Ron Howard and Tom Hanks, assuming it has a sliver of the same success that The D-Code did.  That book spent 24,498 weeks on the NY Times bestseller list and made brown something close to $75 million.

Brown has spent the past few years researching and writing the follow-up in and around Washington, D.C.  Speculation is rampant that the new novel will not only be equal parts horrible and unputdownable, but also have something to do with the Free Masons that built America’s capitol city.

You can also rest assured that the ailing book publishing business is anticipating this release will not only save the industry but also rescue the unicorns from the endangered species list.