As we were sorting out the dismantling of Bantam Dell and Doubleday by Random House yesterday, we found that we'd inadvertently reached the same conclusion as Maud Newton and her friend: With Knopf absorbing the actual Doubleday imprint (along with Nan A. Talese), Sonny Mehta was about to become Dan Brown's publisher. "How in the hell does that make any sense?" wondered Maud's friend, and it was only hours later that the answer occurred to us: This means that we might actually see The Solomon Key sometime in 2009, maybe 2010 at the latest.

Because Sonny Mehta can get that book out of Dan Brown if he has to lock himself into a hotel room with the guy and collect the manuscript pages as they come out of the typewriter, just like he did to coax So Long, And Thanks for All the Fish out of Douglas Adams.

(Also, for all the worship of Knopf's literary elegance among book reviewers, it's worth remembering this is also the house of Anne Rice, Maeve Binchy, and Carl Hiaasen—not to mention, once upon a time, Michael Crichton—it's not as if they've ever completely washed their hands of commercial fiction, nor have no idea what to do with it. Although we will concede that the three of the four authors mentioned whom we've actually read were also better writers, sentence for sentence, than Brown... though not all equally better.)