American writer Dan Brown returned to the witness stand on Wednesday for a third day of questioning about the writing of his best-selling thriller The Da Vinci Code.
Brown, who is rebuffing claims by two writers that he copied from their work, has already been quizzed about everything from his wife’s handwriting to the word-processing program he uses.
Writers Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh are suing Random House, Brown’s publishers, for copyright infringement, claiming The Da Vinci Code ”appropriated the architecture” of their 1982 non-fiction work, which explores theories that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, the couple had a child and the bloodline survives.
Random House denies the claims, and Brown says the assertion is ”completely fanciful.”
The Da Vinci Code has sold more than 40-million copies since its release three years ago, and has turned Brown from a hardworking, modestly successful novelist into a literary superstar who tries to avoid the public spotlight.
Under questioning on Tuesday by the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Jonathan Rayner James, Brown testified that he was certain he and his wife, Blythe Brown, had only read The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail after he had submitted his synopsis for the novel that would become The Da Vinci Code to his agent in January 2001.
”I think it would be very unlikely that Blythe would be reading it without my knowledge,” Brown said. ”I’m very doubtful that she would buy it and I wouldn’t know.”
Brown has acknowledged they read The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail while researching The Da Vinci Code, but said they also used 38 other books and hundreds of documents, and that the British authors’ book was not crucial to their work.
If Baigent and Leigh succeed in securing an injunction to bar the use of their material, they could hold up the scheduled May 19 film release of The Da Vinci Code, starring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou.
The third author of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Henry Lincoln, is not involved in the case. A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Paul Sutton, refused to say why he was not participating. Lincoln, who is in his 70s and reportedly in poor health, could not be reached for comment. — Sapa-AP