Clive Prince and Lynn Picknett, authors of one of Dan Brown's prime sources for The Da Vinci Code (The Templar Revelation), have weighed in on the recent wave of critical comment against DB. They think he's getting a raw deal:

A lot of people try to put him down critically and say the book's bad and the ideas are bad. And a lot of the critical reaction has been very kind of snobby, that he can't write and that people shouldn't be introduced to these kinds of ideas in a thriller. Well, they weren't going to learn about them any other way.

I'm sure DB would be the first to acknowledge that he's not writing high literature. What has been interesting though, is to watch the number of people who originally were enthusiastic about the book, who now look down their noses at it.