According to the lawsuit, Brown told his wife they’d “grown apart,” but could “remain best friends.”īlythe Brown says she reluctantly moved out of the couple’s home in Rye Beach, N.H., in August 2018. over inconsequential matters for no apparent reason.” In 2018, Blythe Brown says, her husband told her he was unhappy in the marriage and wanted a separation. “The life and times of Dan Brown imply not every tale has a sting,” wrote The Guardian.īut Blythe Brown claims in her suit that she noticed changes in her husband in 2014: “He started to act distant, dressed differently, and instigated arguments. In a 2004 profile of the author, The Guardian described him as “mundane,” “unexciting,” and “not exactly a riot of hedonism,” suggesting that biographers would be disappointed if they investigated Brown with as much verve as his fictional hero, Robert Langdon, searches for the holy grail. after much discussion and brainstorming with Blythe, I eventually became convinced that I could introduce the idea successfully.”ĭespite his celebrity - Brown was one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2005 - his public persona is conspicuously cerebral. finding it too incredible and inaccessible to readers - I thought it was a step too far,” Brown says in the court filing. “ lobbied hard for me to find a way to use a theory which concerned the legend of the Holy Grail - the so-called ‘bloodline theory’. In her lawsuit, Blythe Brown includes a sworn statement made by her ex-husband in an unrelated 2005 legal action in England alleging he plagiarized portions of “The Da Vinci Code.” In that case, which Brown won, the author credited his then-wife for refining the themes and plot of the bestselling book.

She’s a great researcher.” And in the acknowledgements of “The Da Vinci Code,” the author cites: “my wife, Blythe - art historian, painter, front-line editor, and without a doubt the most astonishingly talented woman I have ever known.” I probably wouldn’t have written without her. In 2017, he told the Daily Mail: “I was writing about the Louvre and the Grail, but it was Blythe who said I should write about Mary Magdalene, too. In interviews, Dan Brown has spoken often about his ex-wife’s role in crafting his books. (Blythe Brown says she also helped with “Angels & Demons,” which was published in 2000, before “The Da Vinci Code,” but republished later.)

She claims she was the “lead researcher” and “developed the premise of the critical concepts, historical emphases, and complex plot twists” for “The Da Vinci Code” and for all of Brown’s subsequent books, a string of bestsellers that includes “The Lost Symbol,” “Inferno,” and “Origin.” Together, she says, the couple “brainstormed the storylines and plot twists” of the novels. In her lawsuit, Blythe Brown says she was not merely a bystander to her ex-husband’s phenomenal success.

Da vinci code author