The Man Behind The Da Vinci Code:
An Unauthorised Biography Of Dan Brown
Lisa Rogak
Scribe 2005
Hard cover, illustrated, 140pp



There is a difference, and I'm not sure everyone in the modern media gets this, between people who are interesting and people who do interesting things. Sure, someone may have been the star of the best motion picture in the last 20 years, but that doesn't make them a hypothetical dinner party invite. Or, put another way, you might have written a hugely best-selling airport thriller with a controversial take on history, but that doesn't mean you're worth a biography.

Lisa Rogak obviously disagrees. Perhaps drawn to the fact that 'The Da Vinci Code' author Dan Brown doesn't give interviews these days, something she mentions more than once, Rogak has written an account of Brown's life before (and after) he became the literary superstar he is now, and I imagine many people will be surprised to know that before publishing three average-selling books he released two average-selling albums of music.

A big problem is that, being unauthorised, Rogak's book contains no direct interviews between writer and subject. There are plenty of quotes from earlier interviews with other people, giving the sense that Rogak has not so much written as compiled her work. She gets some interesting material from interviews with old acquaintances of Brown's, which she doesn't always make the most of; she teases readers with an associate's suggestion Brown's music career was supported by a "sugar daddy" and fails to follow it up at all.

The fatal flaw, though, I've already mentioned: Brown's story is not one to set the world on fire. It's a scant 140 pages long, and that's about as much as anyone could stretch it to. Rogak frequently makes the mistake of introducing quite incidental packets of information as interesting, including noting a couple of people named Brown that Dan isn't related to. (I'm glad that one's finally been put to rest.) Perhaps I would have gotten more out of this biography if there was some kind of insight into Dan Brown the man, but if Rogak came to any conclusions about her subject then she seems to have kept them to herself.

Henry Nicholls