The Da Vinci Code

[Prudence]

I've had discussions with literally dozens of co-workers and acquaintances who are convinced that deoderant gives people cancer and that giant Costa Rican spiders have travelled here on bananas and are hiding under toilet seats and biting people. I'm not going to hold authors responsible for the public's apparent lack of common sense.

Plus, there are any number of novels that start off with "no really! This is all true!" I think it's a silly conceit most of the time, but I don't hold the author responsible for concocting a tale that apparently some people find plausible. I don't think this is at all like Million Little Pieces, as in that case the author was (as I understand it) publicly claiming it to be his true biography. If Dan Brown has been claiming in interviews that his work is actual history, then I'll have to revise my assessment.