What would you classify...Follow

a book say...written by Dan Brown is? I mean I know it's not Science Fiction or Fantasy, but what would you classify one?

I read all 3 books back to back. He had me glued to the pages. But you have to hand it to him, he made the genre popular.

But yes, mystery novel, or conspiracy(sp?) novel?

I'm with GieG on this one.

I read the "DaVinci Code" after hearing so much about it, regretted it swiftly but struggled through it. Then I decided it might have been just that book and read his "Angels and Demons". (almost typed Bernini Mystery, but that's the Dutch title for some reason) Finished that one within the hour.

I know better than to touch another of his books, to each his own but this is not for me.

(you might have read the author GieG, Aspe? About the only other author I can finish a book from within the hour and still know exactly what it was all about.)

You mean Pieter Aspe, the Belgium writer?

Agreed. Dude was definitely writing for an audience with, at most, 6th grade reading comprehension.

Maybe THAT's why the book is so inexplicably popular--the average Joe could actually get it.

Crap?

a bit strong....

poorly written mushy tripe for the uneducated masses that wouldn't know a well written book if it smacked them in the face?

No no thats Rowling....

I have it.

How to take a great idea and ruin it by letting an amature keep the copyright!

Spot on.

Well, mystery/suspense isn't a genre I tend to follow a lot, so I really can't speak to that, but if you want an example of damned fine contemporary literature, try the Kushiel's Dart trilogy by Jacqueline Carey. Don't let the cover art and description fool you--it may look like mere erotica on the surface, but it's an extremely well-written trilogy.

Most notable is the author's use of language--very elegant and sophisticated, definitely NOT something written for a reader with a 6th-grade vocabulary. The narrative prose reads almost like poetry at times. Just read the excerpt (should be the first 6 or so pages of the book) for an idea of how beautifully she chooses her words.

It's hard to pigeon-hole this trilogy into a genre--if you look in the bookstore, you'll find it in Fantasy, but it's really much more. It's not so much fantasy as an alternative version of European history, starting with the question of what would happen if in the first few centuries after Christ and the fall of the Roman empire, Christianity had not become the predominant religion in Europe, and most of what was once called Gaul--France and Germany, mainly--were settled by a race of people descended from angels.

The book has elements of romance and erotica, yes, but primarily, it's a mystery, dealing with the political intrigue and machinations of the heroine's homeland. She may be a courtesan and a divinely-inspired masochist, but her proclivities do not carry the plot, they merely provide a goad here and there and serve as the means by which she finds herself becoming involved in the political intrigue.

Aside from the language, the other really strong point in this trilogy is the plotting. It's tight and sharp, all the way through. Though the characters may occasionally have to veer off-course, the plot itself runs through the books with laser-beam focus and precision. This is one of the reasons why I haven't been as pleased with the second trilogy set in the Kushiel world (third book is due out this summer.) That trilogy is more of a character exploration and doesn't have the same sort of tightly-plotted tension as the first trilogy did.

At any rate, if you're looking for examples of writing that are considerably less hackney-ed than Dan Brown, that's where I would recommend you start.

There was a TV show following the books?

probably sucked...

Zieveraar beat me to it. Foucault's Pendulum is the closest that I can think of to something like The Da Vinci Code, except it it qualifies as "Literature".