Born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Van de Wetering moved to Maine in 1975 and enjoyed a passion for Zen Buddhism, motorcycles and jazz, among other things, the Bangor Daily News reported. He died on July 4 of complications from cancer, said Nikki Smith, his longtime literary agent.

Van de Wetering lived in a number of countries including Japan, where he joined a Zen monastery, which he wrote about in his first book, "The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery." Later, Van de Wetering created the popular "Grijpstra and de Gier" series of detective novels, set in Amsterdam, that drew from his experience as a police officer.

In 1984, he was awarded the international Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere, a French prize for crime fiction, for his book "The Maine Massacre," a Grijpstra and de Gier mystery set in Maine.

A fire on Saturday caused about $20,000 in damage to the home of Tom Clancy, a best-selling author of political thrillers, authorities said. Firefighters were called to Clancy's Calvert County, Maryland, home about 12:15 p.m., said Lt. Fred Holzberger of the Prince-Frederick Volunteer Fire Department.

Clancy and his family were home at the time, but no one was injured, Holzberger said. He said the fire started on the deck and reached the home. The blaze was extinguished in about 20 minutes. The fire is under investigation by the Maryland fire marshal's office

Baldacci named his character for film director Oliver Stone, whose controversial movies include JFK. "It was a perfect name for him to take," Baldacci says. "My Oliver Stone is a big-time conspiracy theorist who doesn't trust anybody. So I thought it would be a tip of the hat." Baldacci says he admires Stone's movies because "they take a position, they're courageous and they stir up controversy. And that's never a bad thing." The prosperous-looking Baldacci appears to be the antithesis of the jaded Stone in his novels, whose tattered wardrobe makes people assume he's homeless.

"Someone asked me one time, 'How cynical are you about the U.S. government on a scale of 1 to 10?' I think my answer was 8.5 to 9.3," Baldacci says. "I have given it a lot of thought. I don't have a low opinion of all politics or all politicians, but of the substantial majority of them and how they do their business and go about their work."

*****

"In The Camel Club, I had the audacity to make a complex issue complicated instead of very simple, black and white," he says. "I posed the question, 'Wouldn't it be smart to understand why a normal person in the Middle East might become a terrorist?' I was exploring things some people didn't want explored. They wanted John Wayne." The roots of terrorism he explores in the novel include economic and social pressures faced by young Muslims. Because of early criticism, Baldacci was convinced The Camel Club would not be popular with the reading public, but it turned out to be his biggest seller in hardcover.

"In every thriller written about Washington, particularly after 9/11, there are good guys and there are bad guys, and there's no gray area at all," Baldacci says. "Good guys kill all the bad guys, and they do it any way they can because that makes the world safer and better. That's total BS, but it plays well to audiences. "For me, the gray is where I live, and that's the only reason I write books like this." Those who fight for justice in his novels don't always survive or win their battles. But critics and fans appear to like Baldacci's less than black-and-white approach to good and evil.

Since he died, raving insanely in a hospital bed, Poe's demise has been the subject of a multitude of theories, ranging from murder to mugging to alcoholism to political skulduggery to catching an infectious disease such as rabies. Now a leading American author, who has written a novel about Poe's death, believes that he has come up with convincing evidence that could at last solve the puzzle: brain cancer.

*****

Matthew Pearl, author of The Poe Shadow, spent three years researching Poe, especially the circumstances of his death. He had hoped to uncover new evidence to solve a mystery that has perplexed experts for more than 150 years. He thinks he has unearthed proof that Poe had a terrible brain tumour, which could explain why he died so dramatically. 'It would explain his hallucinations and his mental state before he died,' Pearl told The Observer.

*****

Pearl's evidence came in the form of several old newspaper stories written about the exhumation of Poe's body 26 years after his death. Poe's coffin was being moved to a more prominent spot in the cemetery and the onlookers were amazed to see that his shrunken brain was still visible inside his skull. It was described as being 'dried and hardened in the skull' in an 1878 article in the St Louis Republican newspaper, whereas a letter in the Baltimore Gazette claimed that: 'The cerebral mass... evidenced no sign of disintegration or decay, though, of course, it is somewhat diminished.'

Pearl contacted a friend's wife who worked as a forensic pathologist. She pointed out that the descriptions could not possibly have been of a brain, as it is one of the first parts of a corpse to rot after death. But she said some forms of brain tumours can calcify after death and leave a hardened mass. One account described the brain as almost rattling around inside Poe's head. Pearl also looked up pictures of calcified tumours and discovered that some resembled shrunken brains.

"I am so pleased to have written my first children's book and to have my dear friend Wendell Minor illustrate it. I thought it would be a daunting project, but with six grandchildren and eleven step grandchildren, I've been telling stories to children for a long time," said Mary Higgins Clark.

"We are thrilled to reunite longtime friends Mary Higgins Clark and Wendell Minor in such a special collaboration," said Rubin Pfeffer, Senior Vice President and Publisher of Simon & Schuster Children's. "Through his art, Wendell catches the spirit of Mary's brilliant writing and truly brings Ghost Ship to life for children. It's as if this pairing was always meant to be."

Set in Cape Cod, Ghost Ship is the story of a friendship between two boys, one visiting his grandmother on summer vacation in Cape Cod and another a cabin boy for a sea captain with stories to tell of his adventures on the high seas centuries before. Evoking the mystery and history of the high seas and the rich stories of Cape Cod, this is a book for children and for families to share and to make the world of long ago very near and real.

"Mary Higgins Clark is an amazing storyteller and in Ghost Ship she creates a story rich in character and adventure that will inspire young readers to imagine the stories of their own past," said Paula Wiseman, V.P. and Editorial Director, who will be editing the book.

In the Italian town of Ceccano, two members of the town council burnt a copy of the book "The Da Vinci Code" on Saturday one after the movie opened in cinemas. Stefano Gizzi and Massimo Ruspandini, both from centre-right parties, lit the pages of the controversial novel by Dan Brown, as an outraged crowd yelled "buffoons" and "Taliban" and threw rotten tomatoes. The novel, with 46 million copies in print, contends that Jesus married Mary Magdalene had descendants, and that Opus Dei, a conservative religious organisation close to the Vatican, and the Catholic Church were at the centre of covering it up.

The two members of the city council burning the book said that they consider the book and the movie and an insult to Jesus and to their Christian Heritage. Several Vatican officials and cardinals have spoken out against the novel in recent weeks in the run-up to the film's release, including at least one Vatican official who has called for a boycott. As the pages of the book slowly turned black, dozens of people railed against the two council members saying that their act was a return to the Inquisition times.

Carabinieri struggled too keep the crowd under control as tempers flared, and shouts of "communist" and "fascist" echoed across the square. The event took place in a square nestled between the city hall and a small church. While the crowd was yelling in the square, inside Ceccano's city hall, the mayor was presiding over a wedding. Following the wedding the Mayor declared that he was "ashamed" of the book burning and called it a "deplorable act."

But right now you want to know is: Is "The Da Vinci Code" a good movie? The answer overall is yes.

*****

For most of its overlong two and a half hours, the film is enticing. And surprising in that it's not Tom Hanks — solid as usual — or French film star Audrey Tautou who make the movie tick. It's Sir Ian McKellen, who appears about a quarter to half way through the proceedings and very sublimely scores himself an Academy Award nomination.

*****

....it's a good movie, a solid entertainment with much to recommend it. The only people who could be unhappy with it are Opus Dei, which is fairly well attacked as represented in excellent performances by Paul Bettany, Jean Reno and Alfred Molina. Mainstream audiences will take this for what it is: superb escapism, excellent summer entertainment and ambitious filmmaking.

Oscar-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman was "startled" when he heard that Vatican cardinals were condemning his next picture, the hotly anticipated film version of "The Da Vinci Code." "Then I was concerned," he muses, "and then I realized that the Vatican doesn't like condoms either, and a lot of people buy those."

*****

"I'm the guy who wrote the screenplay that every single person has read the book of. That's a lot of people going, 'Let me tell what I imagined…."

*****

He follows what seems to be the classic rule book on how to become a successful Hollywood screenwriter. He swears by screenwriting guru Robert McKee, eschews writing original scripts, and worships at the altar of the three-act structure. "The screenplays I write are formally very predictable," Goldsman says. "They're essentially the one-page version of a clothing dummy. They have two legs, a middle, two arms and a head. I can dress them up pretty on a good day, but the structure is simple, and I like that."

*****

When Goldsman first read "The Da Vinci Code," it wasn't a bestseller, merely an interesting galley floating around Hollywood. That had changed by the time he and Howard sat down with Brown more than a year later in a hotel room at the Toronto Four Seasons. "There were two cultures staring across the table at each other," recalls Goldman. "We were the movie. He was the novel…. He [was thinking,] I'm sure, that our agenda was just to change everything." Adding to the intrigue is that Brown had written his own version of the script, which no one to this day has seen.

The sides came together over, of all things, codes. Brown was pleased to find out that the pair was fascinated by the use of such mysteries in the book and that Howard wanted to add more codes to the film (which he's done). The ice was broken, so much so that Brown hung around the set "a good third of the time," says Goldsman.

Producer Barbara Broccoli is so certain his first film as 007, "Casino Royale", will be a hit she has already started working on the sequel. She said: "We are already working on the sequel. We're in the early stages of that. It will be an original story but will continue part of what the story is in Casino Royale".

Another scene is set in a hotel room," said the insider. "The script simply says: 'Bond and Vesper make reckless love and destroy the room.' It's frenzied and very, very passionate. Bond fans won't have seen anything like it before."

As we announced last week, the long search for the latest Bond girl came to an end, with Eva Green joining the Casino cast. Producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli said they were "…thrilled that Eva has joined a first rate, international cast."

Someone who doesn’t seem so thrilled is Casino Royale script doctor Paul Haggis. After collecting his BAFTA on Sunday night, the Crash helmer, standing alongside Bond hopeful Thandie Newton, said of the casting: "I think we all know who I was rooting for" and nodded his head towards Newton. Thandie simply shrugged her shoulders and admitted: "That ship has sailed I’m afraid - it’s a shame."

The latest hitch on the set of Casino Royale, the new 007 flick, reportedly occurred when the star revealed he couldn't drive the super-suave superspy's trademark Aston Martin. Craig, 37, found himself shaken, not stirred, when he was confronted with a manual gearshift instead of an automatic, British newspapers said today.

Craig, the first blond Bond, got off to a rough start. His two front teeth were knocked out when a stunt went wrong during his first fight scene for "Casino Royale." Adding insult to injury, disgruntled Bond fans have launched a Web site - www.craignotbond.com - to protest Craig's casting as their hero. Apparently they feel the English actor just doesn't have the right stuff to follow in the footsteps of former Bonds Sean Connery, Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan - or even Timothy Dalton and George Lazenby.

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 team, led by Alvai Winkler, reported the model it uses to predict the success of books catching on with the public gave The Da Vinci Code only a 36 percent chance of even making the charts, the Guardian reported.

Other surprising finds were the average scores given to all of the hit Harry Potter books and the negative scores given to nearly everything ever written by Charles Dickens. Despite the contradictions, Winkler told the newspaper he still has faith in the scoring system that uses the title to predict a book`s success or failure.

Books that followed the group`s model to success all had figurative titles instead of literal ones -- the first word was a pronoun, a verb, an adjective or a greeting; and the grammar patterns either were a possessive case with a noun, or an adjective and noun or of the words "The ... of ...," Winkler said. Among the top rated titles were Agatha Christies' Sleeping Murder and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials.

Mehas has said that some witnesses made statements to him that contradict the prosecution's case. But he initially refused to turn over his notes, saying they were his private work product. Hill ordered the information be kept under seal until he decides the issue.

Mehas also had unprecedented access to Senior Deputy District Attorney Ron Zonen's case files and talked extensively with the prosecutor about the case. Hill last week refused the defense's request that he remove Zonen from the case, rejecting claims that the prosecutor's cooperation with the filmmakers constituted a conflict of interest.

Hollywood, 25, is accused of orchestrating the crime as part of a feud he had with Markowitz's older half brother over a $1,200 drug debt. Hollywood was captured in Brazil in March and brought to Santa Barbara. He could be sentenced to death if he's found guilty.

In the film, "Nancy Drew: The Mystery in Hollywood Hills," the heroine accompanies her father on a business trip to Los Angeles, and stumbles on evidence about a long-unsolved crime involving the death of a movie star. Her resourcefulness and personal responsibility are put to the test when she finds herself in the middle of the fast-living, self-indulgent world of Hollywood. Andrew Fleming will direct for Warner Bros.

The first Nancy Drew book was published in 1930 and featured a plucky heroine who lived in fictional River Heights. The daughter of an attorney, she tackled jewel thieves, smugglers, kidnappers and organized crime syndicates. The books also had a dose of fashion and cooking.

The books were attributed to Carolyn Keene, a pen name used by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, which published the books. Mildred A. Wirt Benson wrote 23 of the first 30 books, and Harriet Stratemeyer, who inherited the company with her sister Edna, penned 24 volumes. The books have been rewritten and updated over the years.

The real Reichs, who works for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for the state of North Carolina and for the Laboratoire des Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale for the province of Quebec, says the idea for the series is "brilliant." "We hope my readers will get a kick out of that and realize that it's another manifestation of Tempe, and they are in on this inside joke," says Reichs, also a professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.

Bones, Reichs makes clear, is not based on any of her novels. But like their plots, the story lines for Bones are grounded in her expertise in a field that specializes in identifying remains so badly decomposed, burned or destroyed that standard identification methods are useless. "Each of those stories will be original," says Reichs, who is working with the show's writers. "It's a good outlet for ideas I don't use in the books."

Writer Alice Steinbach picks: Persuasion by Jane Austen.

"Prepare to lose yourself in this smashing story of love lost and then regained in the nick of time - all plotted, of course, in Austen's usual brilliant scenes of social comedy and mores. Add to that the author's delightful ability to spot from a mile off the slightest hint in her characters of such bad habits as pomposity, self-delusion and prejudice. But Persuasion goes further than other Austen novels. The love story is deeper, the characters slightly older, and it tackles in a very bold way the morally ambiguous nature of persuasion in all its forms."

Author Sujata Massey picks: Absolute Friends, by John LeCarre

"The best thing that can happen to a successful writer is for him to continue taking risks - and John LeCarre has done that exponentially in his most recent books. This novel tells the life stories of two male friends, both retired spies, who are called back to duty after 9/11 for one last mission. The book raises serious questions about the new world order, and will alternately make you laugh and cry over the changing fates of its believable, endearing characters."

Author Laura Lippman: Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill by Maud Hart Lovelace

The summer I was 11, I took this classic to Bethany Beach, along with six books by Walter Farley, having forgotten that I wasn't particularly interested in horses. I ended up reading Betsy and Tacy over and over again that week. I still re-read all Lovelace's work once a year.

"If the world is telling you you're successful, but you don't feel it, you might as well have failed," he says.

He quit his law firm to float around the globe, looking for a venue in which to develop a series of novels around a hard-boiled hero. Settling on Thailand, he began frequenting Bangkok's red-light district, waiting for just the right cop to walk into a bar and inspire him. To pass the time he befriended the bargirls. His big break, as he describes, came when one of them took him home.

"The Bangkok novels are not the work of a young man," he says. "I couldn't have done it without knowing how the world works." Practicing family law in England taught him about the "grueling, wrenching, downright sadistic" nature of human relations. Practicing criminal law in Asia taught him about the grim reality of the streets.

He claims there is no better subject than the gritty city he has adopted. "There's no cushion of gentility here. Life is raw. The people don't lie. You tell me a better place to be a writer."

"There is no secret. I listen when people are talking. I listen when they're talking to each other, and I listen when they talk to me. You just have to listen to the words people use, and the patterns of their speech. ... And I don't see any reason for using any other verb after a line of dialogue other than 'said.' It's what the person's saying that's important, not what the writer thinks is a good word. And adding an adverb to 'said' is just as bad."

• Autographed Advance Reading Copy of Creepers (CD Books), the spine-tingling upcoming thriller from multiple New York Times bestselling author David Morrell.
  
  
• Autographed copy of Forced Mate by Rowena Cherry (Dorchester), the steamy futuristic romance novel which was a finalist for Best Futuristic Romance at the PEARL Awards.
  
  
• Set of two books: Sandstorm by James Rollins (Avon) with the new lenticular special edition cover and Map of Bones by James Rollins (William Morrow). These two exciting thrillers from the New York Times bestselling author are the perfect summer reading for fans of Dan Brown and Michael Crichton.
  
  
• Advance Reading Copy of the upcoming mystery Relics by Mary Anna Evans (Poisoned Pen Press), in which an archeologist finds more than she bargained for while investigating a centuries-old ethnic group which seems to have strange immunity to most modern diseases, including AIDS.

The mother-daughter writing team of P.J. Tracy (mother P.J. Lambrecht and daughter Traci) hit on a formula a few years ago that sparked a vibrant series in the mystery/thriller realm.

The series, which blends elements of comedy and computer geek-speak, is in its third incarnation from Putnam. Dead Run leaves behind the whodunit nature of its predecessors, Monkeewrench (2003) and Live Bait (2004), in favor of a more straight-ahead thriller format.

"Sometimes you're in the mood for a book that explores a complex mystery; sometimes you feel like a little straightforward excitement that carries you along for the ride without too much effort," said P.J. from her home in Minnesota.

Daughter Traci added from her home in California: "I think P.J. and I write much better and more creatively when we allow ourselves to occasionally step outside the parameters a specific genre dictates. Above all, we want to keep things fresh, keep the surprises coming -- we owe it to our readers."

I am banning myself from the Internet.

No, not completely (though that might be nice). E-mail is pretty much a professional necessity for me at this point. I'll continue keeping this blog, because I enjoy writing it and others seem to enjoy reading it. I'll continue reading and occasionally responding to my LJ friends list, because it's one of the best ways I have of keeping in touch with friends (both real-life and electronic). I'll continue my eBay sales, because that little bit of extra income helps a lot. I'll maintain my website, and may even overhaul it soon. I'll keep reading eGullet, because it's a valuable food-writing resource and their membership policies keep the number of idiots way, way down.

That's the problem, you see: I have idiot fatigue. I don't except myself from this; the Internet has definitely made me dumber. I can't do anything about the other idiots, but I can do something about myself. I don't want to use Feedster to find out what people have said about me on their blogs. I don't want babybats who think I should just discreetly keel over dead if I'm not going to write that Lost Souls sequel.....

I've long said that the Internet can be a valuable tool for resource and promotion, and I still believe that. People used to liken it to CB radio. I think it's more like a gun: not inherently evil, but dangerous as hell if you mess around with it. The more time I spend online, the less I spend reading and writing, and I can't have that. It's time to get back to work. Fo' rizzle.