After having just finished reading Dan Brown's 'Angels & Demons' (in anticipation for the film adaptation now showing in cinemas) I have come to the following conclusion, which I hope succinctly describes Mr Brown's writing style:
Do lots of research on a topic that most people find vaguely intriguing (e.g. Renaissance art), throw in a conspiracy theory (usually involving the Vatican), draw it out to a global scale involving secret government organisations, add in a few platitudes about faith and religion, make your main character an erudite who quite conveniently happens to have an encyclopedic knowledge of literally everything he encounters, and then make sure you end every paragraph with a pseudo-suspenseful cliffhanger.
I am not saying that his books are not entertaining. Nor am I saying they are a waste of time. On the contrary, I credit 'The Da Vinci Code' for having resuscitated my appreciation for the masters of Italian art. I just think that he is never going to win a Pulitzer if he goes on writing books so undemanding and so formulaic that that they should rightfully be stocked in the preschool section of the bookstore.
But then again, when your annual income is a neat $75 million, would you really miss the Pulitzer?
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