Keep an Eye on the Upcoming Vanity Fair

I'm reporting on this item simply because I find it so interesting.

Both Publishers Weekly (PW) and Publishers Lunch (PL) issue a daily email to subscribers on weekdays, summarizing news in the industry. Late Tuesday afternoon, after their regular email had already gone out, PW issued a special "alert" on the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair magazine. Wednesday morning's PL also included an item on the forthcoming Vanity Fair.

What's all the fuss about? According to PW: "A cover story set to go on stands...by former Newsweek writer...Seth Mnookin called 'The Da Vinci Clone' reexamines the lawsuit writer Lewis Perdue filed in the U.S. claiming his 2000 novel, Daughter of God, was strikingly similar to The Da Vinci Code."

Huh? Didn't Perdue lose that case in New York last August? Wasn't that initial loss followed by a second loss in the Second U.S. Court of Appeals this April?

Let me be clear. I am NOT talking about the widely publicized case brought against The Da Vinci Code publisher Random House (RH) by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, two of the three authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, who had claimed that Dan Brown stole the "architecture" of their non-fiction book. A judge in London ruled in favor of Random House in early April, 2006.

No, the Vanity Fair article refers to an earlier claim of infringement against Dan Brown by a fiction writer.

Back in 2004, the San Francisco Chronicle described a thriller: "[C]urators slump to the floor dead, and the hero and heroine elude secret brotherhoods and Vatican renegades across Europe to find a secret that will destroy Christianity. Da Vinci is mixed up in the plots, as is the idea that the early role of women in the church was suppressed."

The book the Chronicle was describing was not The Da Vinci Code written by Dan Brown and released in 2003 by Random House. The book was The Da Vinci Legacy written by Lewis Perdue and released in 1983 by Tor.

After The Da Vinci Code was published, thriller author Lewis Perdue contacted Random House, complaining of infringement. In an interesting preemptive strike, RH sued Perdue, asking a New York judge to issue a declaratory judgment against him. Perdue then turned around and counter-sued RH for $150 million in damages. As I mentioned earlier, Perdue lost his suit in August, 2005. Undeterred, he took the case to an appeals court where he was dealt a second blow in April, 2006, the same month RH won the non-fiction infringement case in a London court.

"Perdue's accusation against Brown is not a case of straightforward word-for-word borrowing," which meant that he had to prove "substantial similarity" between the two thrillers according to the SF Chronicle. Two U.S. Courts did not find the evidence to support his claim.

So, why are we revisiting this again? According to PW talking about the Vanity Fair article, "The most interesting and eyebrow-raising tidbit involves 'mysterious' e-mails Perdue received from someone called Ahamedd Saaddodeen. Perdue told Mnookin he thought the messages were being sent by Brown's wife (and chief researcher), Blythe."

Despite the fact that PL said "Count Me Baffled" about all the interest in the Mnookin article in Vanity Fair, they still devoted three paragraphs to the story.

Guess I'm going to have to read the article when it comes out.