Daniel Gerhard Brown is an American author best known for his thriller novels, including the Robert Langdon novels Angels & Demons (2000), The Da Vinci Code (2003), The Lost Symbol (2009), Inferno (2013), and Origin (2017). His novels are treasure hunts that usually take place over a period of 24 hours. They feature recurring themes of cryptography, art, and conspiracy theories. His books have been translated into 57 languages and, as of 2012, have sold over 200 million copies. Three of them, Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code, and Inferno, have been adapted into films, while one of them, The Lost Symbol, was adapted into a television show.
The Da Vinci Code is a 2006 American mystery thriller film directed by Ron Howard, written by Akiva Goldsman, and based on Dan Brown's 2003 novel of the same name. The first in the Robert Langdon film series, the film stars Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Sir Ian McKellen, Alfred Molina, Jürgen Prochnow, Jean Reno and Paul Bettany. In the film, Robert Langdon, a professor of religious symbology from Harvard University, is the prime suspect in the grisly and unusual murder of Louvre curator Jacques Saunière. On the body, the police find a disconcerting cipher and start an investigation. Langdon escapes with the assistance of police cryptologist Sophie Neveu, and they begin a quest for the legendary Holy Grail. A noted British Grail historian, Sir Leigh Teabing, tells them that the actual Holy Grail is explicitly encoded in Leonardo da Vinci's wall painting, The Last Supper. Also searching for the Grail is a secret cabal within Opus Dei, an actual prelature of the Holy See, who wish to keep the true Grail a secret to prevent the destruction of Christianity.
The Lost Symbol is a 2009 novel written by American writer Dan Brown. It is a thriller set in Washington, D.C., after the events of The Da Vinci Code, and relies on Freemasonry for both its recurring theme and its major characters.
Lynn Picknett is an English writer of books that are mainly about religious history and popular conspiracy theories, the paranormal, the occult, and historical mysteries.
Per Petterson is a Norwegian novelist. His debut book was Aske i munnen, sand i skoa (1987), a collection of short stories. He has since published a number of novels to good reviews. To Siberia (1996), set in the Second World War, was published in English in 1998 and nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. I kjølvannet, translated as In the Wake (2002), is a young man's story of losing his family in the Scandinavian Star ferry disaster in 1990 ; it won the Brage Prize for 2000. His 2008 novel Jeg forbanner tidens elv won the Nordic Council Literature Prize for 2009, with an English translation published in 2010.
The Da Vinci Code, a popular suspense novel by Dan Brown, generated criticism and controversy after its publication in 2003. Many of the complaints centered on the book's speculations and misrepresentations of core aspects of Christianity and the history of the Catholic Church. Additional criticisms were directed toward the book's inaccurate descriptions of European art, history, architecture, and geography.
The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery thriller novel by Dan Brown. It is Brown's second novel to include the character Robert Langdon: the first was his 2000 novel Angels & Demons. The Da Vinci Code follows symbologist Robert Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu after a murder in the Louvre Museum in Paris causes them to become involved in a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene having had a child together.
Tom Kristensen is a Norwegian writer, best known for his books in the thriller genre.
Sven Elvestad was a Norwegian journalist and author. He is best known for his detective stories, which were published under the pen name Stein Riverton and translated to several languages, including German and English.
Jørn Lier Horst is a Norwegian author of crime fiction and a former Senior Investigating Officer at Vestfold police district. His books have been published in over 40 countries and have sold more than ten million copies. Horst made his writing debut in 2004 with Key Witness, based on a true murder story. The detective character in his crime novels is William Wisting, and a television series based on the series premiered in 2019. He has also written children's books, including a series named Clue and books about Detective agency no. 2.
Hanne Ørstavik is a Norwegian writer. She was born in Tana in Finnmark province in the far north of Norway, and moved to Oslo at the age of 16. With the publication of the novel Hakk (Cut) in 1994, Ørstavik embarked her writing career. Her literary breakthrough came three years later with the publication of Kjærlighet (Love), which in 2006 was voted the 6th best Norwegian book of the last 25 years in a poll published by Dagbladet. Since then she has written several novels and received a number of literary prizes.
Kurt Aust is a pseudonym for Kurt Østergaard, a Danish-Norwegian author and freelance writer.
Anne Karin Thorhus, known under the pseudonym Kim Småge, is a Norwegian novelist, crime fiction writer, writer of short stories, and children's writer.
The Prieuré de Sion, translated as Priory of Sion, was a fraternal organization founded in France in 1956 by Pierre Plantard in his failed attempt to create a prestigious neo-chivalric order. In the 1960s, Plantard began claiming that his self-styled order was the latest front for a secret society founded by crusading knight Godfrey of Bouillon, on Mount Zion in the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1099, under the guise of the historical monastic order of the Abbey of Our Lady of Mount Zion. As a framework for his grandiose assertion of being both the Great Monarch prophesied by Nostradamus and a Merovingian pretender, Plantard further claimed the Priory of Sion was engaged in a centuries-long benevolent conspiracy to install a secret bloodline of the Merovingian dynasty on the thrones of France and the rest of Europe. To Plantard's surprise, all of his claims were fused with the notion of a Jesus bloodline and popularised by the authors of the 1982 speculative nonfiction book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, whose conclusions would later be borrowed by Dan Brown for his 2003 mystery thriller novel The Da Vinci Code.
Inferno is a 2013 mystery thriller novel by American author Dan Brown and the fourth book in his Robert Langdon series, following Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol. The book was published on May 14, 2013, ten years after publication of The Da Vinci Code (2003), by Doubleday. It was number one on the New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction and Combined Print & E-book fiction for the first eleven weeks of its release, and also remained on the list of E-book fiction for the first seventeen weeks of its release. A film adaptation was released in the United States on October 28, 2016.
Bjørn Beltø is a fictional crime novel character created by Tom Egeland, the great-grandson of the writer Jon Flatabø. In an interview with the newspaper Aftenposten, Egeland explained that the protagonist Bjørn Beltø in the novel Sirkelens ende and other works is named after two pseudonyms used by Flatabø: Bjørn Botnen and Sven Beltø.
Torkil Damhaug is a Norwegian physician and crime fiction writer. He has been awarded the Riverton Prize three times, for 2011, 2016, and 2022.
Aslak Nore is a Norwegian journalist, publisher, non-fiction and crime fiction writer. He was awarded the Riverton Prize for 2017.
Sverre Knudsen is a Norwegian writer and musician. He has written for stage, television and digital media, and worked as a music producer.
The Da Vinci Code is a play based on the 2003 mystery thriller novel of the same name by Dan Brown, adapted by Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel.
