Today is Lost Symbol day—or, just another day that Dan Brown will deposit a ginormous check (see Malcolm Jones' review of the book here). The king of the beach read tackles the secrecy of the Freemasons in his latest thriller, and leans on boldface names from art history to create several high-stakes puzzles. (If "puzzles" sounds too pedestrian for $29.95, slip on Doubleday's rose-colored glasses: "Dan Brown's novels are brilliant tapestries of veiled histories, arcane symbols, and enigmatic codes," per the back cover.)

In Brown's earlier novels, those boldface names have typically been legends of Italian history─Galileo, Bernini, da Vinci, and more. But this time we traverse north: please welcome 538-year-old Albrecht Dürer, a German woodcutter and engraver responsible for some groundbreaking, northern Renaissance graphic design you've probably never seen. (Not that this Dürer rhinoceros engraving won't soon be on the sides of buses everywhere. Tourists stampeded to see Bernini's fountain after it was featured as a murder weapon in Angels & Demons).

Despite the fact that Dürer is intrinsically a lot less sexy than da Vinci, the Freemasons' indignity at Symbol is expected to be appreciably "milder" than that of Opus Dei or the Roman Catholic Church. Still, we did find a few select glove slaps. As we learn on page 239, at least one character is under the impression that Masons like "playing dress-up with a bunch of old men"!

I do beg your pardon.