As fans await Dan Brown's next book, his publishers have declared that the clues to the subject of the next book can be found on the cover of The Da Vinci Code. That has sent amateur code breakers and conspiracy enthusiasts on a quest to decipher the clues.
Doubleday, Brown’s publisher, has posted a "webquest" on the internet as part of its advance marketing strategy for the new book. The webquest challenges budding codebreakers to unravel a series of puzzles starting with the ciphers and symbols that are "already in your possession."
The site says: "Disguised on the jacket of The Da Vinci Code, numerous encrypted messages hint at the subject matter of Dan Brown’s next Robert Langdon novel."
A faint grid reference written in reverse on the cover leads, with an adjustment of one degree, to a sculpture called Kryptos in the courtyard of the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Kryptos is covered in about 1,800 letters of code, much of which is still a mystery despite its location at the workplace of some of the world’s shrewdest cryptographers.
A further clue on the jacket is visible with a magnifying glass. Some of the lettering describing the plot is in bolder type than the rest. When read separately from the other words the letters read: "Is there no help for the widow’s son?" Those words, a Masonic call for help, have been linked to Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, known as the Mormons.
He started to say them as he fell to his death from a window after he was shot and fatally wounded by the mob who stormed his prison cell in Carthage, Illinois, in 1844.
Brown is reluctant to betray too many details but he has said that he grew up surrounded by the "Masonic lodges of our fathers" and confirmed that his next novel would be set "within the oldest fraternity in history, the enigmatic brotherhood of the Masons."
The Masons, Skull and Bones, the CIA, the Mormons, a mysterious quest: works for us. But will it ever be released?
