For lovers of secrets, codes, symbols and conspiracies, books by Dan Brown are ultimate fixtures of excitement, ecstasy and exhilaration. Set in a 24-hour period, they engulf the mind, body, heart and soul of the readers completely, with their themes of cryptography, keys, symbols and codes. Interestingly, so much for the treasure hunts, reading them would not have been possible if Dan Brown hadn’t drawn inspiration from Sidney Sheldon’s ‘The Doomsday Conspiracy’ to become a writer! A musician by profession, Dan Brown switched to the vocation of writing full-time later on. However, his move was just the perfect one as he mastered the skill that thriller-based novels demanded and went on to become one of the most celebrated writers of the genre. In a writing career spanning a little over the decade, Brown has come up with classic novels some of which are ‘Angels & Demons’, ‘The Da Vinci Code’, ‘The Lost Symbol’ and ‘Inferno’. Amusingly, all the aforementioned novels have the same protagonist, Robert Langdon, a Harvard symbology expert. Additionally, they share historical themes and Christianity as motifs. Most of his works have garnered immense positive response from the publics and the critics, selling over 200 million copies as of 2012. Also, his books have been translated into 52 languages, while two of them, ‘Angels & Demons’ and ‘The Da Vinci Code’ have been adapted into films.