For the two or three people who believed Dan Brown would follow up THE DA VINCI CODE with something new in 2007, the Bookseller throws ice-cold water in your face. They only speak to the UK marketplace, but one would assume the same applies over here, since Doubleday will probably have first dibs on the finished manuscript over any other foreign territory.

Transworld publisher Larry Finlay said a Da Vinci follow-up had been budgeted in for 2007 but that Brown had yet to send any material. “It is in the budget, but it was in the budget last year. There is still a chance it will be this year; we just don’t know. He’ll deliver, I am sure, but I don’t know when. It will be published when it’s published.” Which is a lovely way of saying there’s no news, there’s no news on when there will be news, and the news of their being news will be news…eventually. How Rumsfeld-ian.