Is it me, or is there more gossipy book news happening in pile-on fashion this week? It's almost as if the literary scandal watchers have to get their fix in by the end of the year in order to settle things up with the taxman. Flights of fancy aside, there is something to Washington political reporter Michael Crowley's beef with bestselling author Michael Crichton - considering that Mick Crowley, a minor character in his newest novel NEXT, gets up to some seriously icky deeds.

Though the New York Times could not get a hold of Crichton or HarperCollins by the time Felicia Lee filed her story, she got plenty of ink via Crowley, who says he is the victim of "a literary hit-and-run" because of a 3,700-word article in The New Republic in March that was critical of Crichton. And as for why Crowley is the first to point out this connection? Well, er, blame what he deems "a corollary to the small penis rule."

"Call it the small man rule: If someone offers substantive criticism of an author and the author responds by hitting below the belt, as it were, then he's conceding that the critic has won."

Maybe it should be the "doth protesteth too much rule"?