With Dan Brown’s long awaited novel, The Lost Symbol, due to be published later this month, there is a very good chance that any conversation about books for the rest of this year will be derailed by the inevitable series of questions: “Ooh, have you read The Lost Symbol yet?”, “How far are you in?”, “Have you found out that such and such is a member of blah blah blah…?”

Destined to become a mandatory talking point, the fans will eagerly lap it up, desperate to finish first and offer their opinions on how it compares to his previous works; newcomers will be anxious to see exactly what they’ve been missing out on all this time, and even people who hate Dan Brown may well find themselves giving in and reading it just so that when they slag it off, they can do so with some authority.

All of which is fine – these big ‘must-read’ books come around every couple of years and they cause a stir only to be forgotten about in a few months down the line. What’s so galling about the whole thing is that people think that the page-turner begins and ends with Dan Brown. The man doesn’t have a monopoly on the genre and there are hundreds of excellent crime, mystery and suspense novels overlooked in favour of a Dan Brown title in bookshops the world over.

So before you get swept up in the hype, at least consider a few alternatives and perhaps try out a few of the following.  Each of them excellently gripping and thrilling reads, the added bonus about these books is that you won’t be embarrassed to have any of them on your bookshelves in five years’ time.

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The Secret History – Donna Tartt
A murder mystery where – somewhat unusually – the murderer is revealed within the first few pages, what keeps you reading the remaining 500+ pages of The Secret History is uncovering the motive. As the story unfolds we get a deeper insight into the strange and self-destructive circle of six gifted classics students, who are all wrapped up in not just the murder of Bunny Corcoran but a string of bizarre incidents. Tartt’s linguistic style is gloriously rich and her depiction of the unsettlingly claustrophobic campus gives the book a truly creepy edge – the type a horror writer would give their right eye for.

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Carter Beats The Devil – Glen David Gold
Though reviews for his latest work Sunnyside have been a somewhat mixed bag, Glen David Gold’s debut novel Carter Beats The Devil remains to be one of the finest novels of the last decade.
Part biography, part mystery thriller, the book gives us a fictionalised account of the life of stage magician Charles Carter. The story begins with the death of the US President – just two hours after he appeared on stage with Carter in a trick where Carter appeared to decapitate him, chop him into pieces and feed him to a lion – and details the subsequent FBI investigation. Whilst on the one hand this is a sad and sympathetic look at a long-established artform being made obsolete as a result of new technology, it is also a thoroughly engrossing tale of death, deception and illusion.

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Farewell, My Lovely – Raymond Chandler
Philip Marlowe – Chandler’s timeless creation – is one of those characters that makes a good story great and a great story classic. Showing Robert Langdon up to be the boring, cardboard-cutout of a character he is, Chandler’s private eye protagonist is a marvellously interesting and intriguing individual.
Even in his plainer works, Raymond Chandler’s dialogue and sense of atmosphere -  delivered to the reader through Marlowe’s ever-weary eye – are always worth savouring, but when he’s really writing at the top of his game (Farewell, My Lovely being a prime example) the effect is breath-snaggingly good.

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Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Jonathan Safran Foer
Although this has closer parallels with that other perennial book club favourite The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime, the story of nine-year old Oskar finding an envelope in his late father’s jacket – containing a key and marked only “Black” – is a much more accomplished novel. The young narrator manages to create a genuinely fascinating story out of very little and offers a wholly unique insight not only into the world of autism, but to the whole world around us.  Dan Brown would do well to read this and learn how to effectively incorporate trivia into a story.

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The Code Of The Woosters – P.G. Wodehouse
Of course, it may be that you read Dan Brown’s books because you enjoy ridiculous, implausible nonsense. There’s no shame in that. Ridiculous, implausible nonsense can be the most entertaining reading of all – provided it’s in the right hands.
Aside from being some of the finest and leanest comic writing ever committed to page, the books that make up P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster series are also artfully crafted suspense stories. With young Bertie getting himself lodged in all manner of far-fetched and preposterous scrapes, the plotting, pace and pitch of these yarns is absolutely immaculate. Far from being simple, whimsical, knockabout capers, these are true works of genius.

(photo courtesy of smileham)