Restraint Flickers Across Dan Brown's Brow

At a benefit lecture for the New Hampshire Writer's Project, local author Dan Brown told audience members he came this close to making his borrowing from Holy Blood, Holy Grail complete by including the suggestions that Jesus didn't die on Good Friday after all:

Brown said a number of historians feel strongly that Christ survived the crucifixion, but he said the information is too flimsy. He would not use the material because Christ’s resurrection is essential to Christianity, he said.

But the really disconcerting discovery was that George W. Bush is allegedly a Brown fan, and that an earlier novel "involves a politically foundering President who decides to launch a Mars mission." Great--you can barely get the guy to look at the front section of the paper, but overpriced pulp inspires policy? Mind you, I have my doubts; a professed devout Christian like W. may not have a hell of a lot of patience for Brown's Magdalenian folderol...Oh, and his next book is about Freemasons in Washington, D.C., which means he'll be weaving expository dialogue around the theories contained in this book.