True

Dan Brown hid a coded message on the book's dust jacket. Check out the first line of the text and you'll notice a boldface letter i. The same is true of the second s in symbologist on the second line. Piece the bold letters together and you get "Is there no help for the widow's son?" Speculation is that the phrase, which has connotations of Freemasonry, hints at the theme of Brown's next novel.

The fictional Depositary Bank of Zurich has a real Web site. True–it was produced by Random House, Brown's publisher, but it's eerily plausible.

Brown's first book was 187 Men to Avoid: A Survival Guide for the Romantically Frustrated Woman (1995). The authors are listed as Dan and Danielle Brown, somewhat oddly, since Dan wrote it with his wife, whose name is Blythe.

Dan Brown went to the same prep school where his father taught. It was Phillips Exeter.

The Da Vinci Code's use of symbols is foreshadowed in his previous book. Angels & Demons is full of a type of illustration called ambigrams, words that are readable upside down as well as right side up.

False

Dan Brown has always been a writer. In fact, he moved to California after college to sing and write songs, producing four CDs. Then he followed his father as a teacher at Phillips Exeter.

Tom Hanks was always the author's first choice to play Robert Langdon. In fact, Brown told an interviewer, C.M. McDonald, "One of the beauties of the reading experience is that everybody pictures Langdon in his or her perfect way.... The second you slap a character [into a movie], no matter how you describe Langdon or any other character, they picture Ben Affleck or Hugh Jackman or whoever it happens to be."

Doubleday jumped at the chance to publish Dan Brown when his editor jumped ship from Simon & Schuster. In fact, the actual reaction was reportedly: "Who's Dan Brown?"

Brown is the world's bestselling author. Don't underestimate Harry Potter; J.K. Rowling has Dan Brown beaten hands down (300 million to 40 million was one recent count).

Dan Brown is an evening person. According to his Web site, he starts writing at four every morning.