It’s a good time to be a conspiracy theorist, said Stephen Marche in Esquire. Dan Brown is gearing up to release “The Lost Symbol,” the follow-up to his wildly successful “The Da Vinci Code,” which was about a Catholic Church coverup of evidence that Jesus fathered offspring. The new book is rumored to be about freemasons—regardless, it’s bound to fuel “the fantasy that someone, whoever it may be, is running the show from behind the scenes.”The culture that Brown encourages is “nothing to celebrate,” said David Klinghoffer in Beliefnet. Throwing red meat to conspiracy theorists could be particularly harmful to Jews. Brown’s books always involve conspiracy theories, and “in conspiracy culture, Jews traditionally have figured as the spider at the center of the web.”

At last, a new Dan Brown novel is coming.

Six years after the release of his mega-selling The Da Vinci Code, the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group announced that Brown’s The Lost Symbol, a thriller set during a 12-hour period and featuring Da Vinci Code protagonist Robert Langdon, will come out in September.

The first printing will be 5 million copies, Knopf Doubleday said yesterday, a modest number considering that The Da Vinci Code has sold more than 80 million worldwide.

New novel by the author of “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels and Demons” will have a first print run of 5 million copies, the largest first print in Random House, Inc. history New York, NY (April 20, 2009)— Dan Brown’s new novel, the eagerly awaited follow-up to his #1 international phenomenon, The Da Vinci Code, which was the bestselling hardcover adult novel of all time with 81 million copies in print worldwide, will be published in the U.S. and Canada by Doubleday on September 15, 2009. The Lost Symbol will have a first printing of 5 million copies, and it will once again feature Dan Brown’s unforgettable protagonist, Robert Langdon.