[Intellivision]

Many are familiar already with the James Frey scandal concerning the embellishments present in his "memoir" A Million Little Pieces which was first exposed by the The Smoking Gun blog. His subsequent appearances on Larry King Live, Oprah, & the spoof of the incident in the "A Million Little Fibers" South Park episode have made him nearly a household name.

News of charges of plagiarism are now being levelled against Dan Brown, the author of the megaseller, the Da Vinci Code, and are just now beginning to appear in the mass media based on an upcoming article in the July issue of Vanity Fair magazine by contributing editor Seth Mnookin.

The piece alleges that there are too many parallels between Brown's book and Lewis Perdue's Daughter of God novel from 2000.

The story just broke today.

Boston Herald June, 7, 2006

Mnookin also cites a passage in “The Da Vinci Code” that is exactly the same as a passage from the paper “Leonardo’s Lost Robot,” written by robotics expert Mark Rosheim. Brown’s publisher, Doubleday, said it was covered under fair use.

"This is the most blatant example of in-your-face plagiarism I’ve ever seen. It just goes on and on. There are literally hundreds of parallels (to Perdue's book),” (says) John Olsson, the director of Britain’s Forensic Linguistics Institute.

Perhaps pun-worthy is that Dan Brown's novel previous to his blockbuster was the 2001 book, Deception Point.

The thing is, there can be little doubt that both Perdue's book and Brown's borrowed rather heavily from Holy Blood, Holy Grail which was first a BBC documentary and then a successful book published way back in 1987 by BBC correspondents...

from wikipedia

...Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, which was based in large part on Pierre Plantard's Priory of Sion hoax. There was a sequel to the book called The Messianic Legacy, in 1987.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Blood,_Holy_Grail

These '80s books were even classified as non-fiction. Although the tomes do rely more on documented research, many agree that they are still a hodge podge of half-truth and conjecture at very best.

from wikipedia

The claims made in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail have been the source of much investigation and criticism over the years, with many independent investigators such as 60 minutes, Time magazine, and (even) the BBC (itself) claiming the book's claims are not credible or verifiable.

Burns, Alex. (2000) Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Disinfo
Mondschein, Ken. (2004) Holy Blood, Holy Grail. New York Press
Mader, Eric. (2005) "At First We Were Skeptical": The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
Miller, Laura. (2004) The Da Vinci crock. salon.com
Telegraph editors. (2004) Da Vinci Code bestseller is plagiarism, authors claim. The Daily Telegraph
Simon Raikes. (2005) The Real Da Vinci Code. Channel 4 .

But back to the poll question:

Who is the worse literary fraud, bestseller James Frey, or neo-pop icon Dan Brown?