Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
DESPITE "Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown and publisher Doubleday recently winning plagiarism battles on both sides of the Atlantic, the case in the court of public opinion is not closed. In an upcoming Vanity Fair article, Seth Mnookin reports on two new instances of possible plagiarism in Brown's past, as he weaves his way through almost as much intrigue as the search for the Holy Grail. Doubleday spokeswoman Suzanne Herz was quite pleasant when she said, "The verdicts in favor of Dan Brown, in two United States federal courts and the British High Court of Justice, speak for themselves." John Olsson, an expert with the Forensic Linguistics Institute in Wales, was not allowed to testify in the U.S. case that involved Lewis Purdue, author of "God's Daughter." But Olsson studied both novels thoroughly and thinks Brown lifted. "When I first read them both, there were times when I was reading one that I thought I was reading the other. A very strange deja vu type of experience," Olsson told The Post's Hasani Gittens yesterday. "What Dan Brown has done to the English language is bad enough, never mind what he's done to other writers."
Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
