The onslaught of coverage of Dan Browns Inferno, (RH/Doubleday; RH Audio; BOT Audio; RH/Vintage espanol; RH large print), releasing tomorrow, continues today with the first review, by Janet Maslin’s in the New York Times. An unabashed Dan Brown/Robert Langdon fan, she is equally enthusiastic about this new outing.

Reviewing The Da Vinci Code in 2003, she said that in this “gleefully erudite suspense novel, Mr. Brown takes the format he has been developing through three earlier novels and fine-tunes it to blockbuster perfection” and prophetically, that, his is “a name you will want to remember,”

Admitting that the “early sections of Inferno come so close to self-parody that Mr. Brown seems to have lost his bearings — as has Langdon, who begins the book in a hospital bed with a case of amnesia that dulls his showy wits,” she goes on to say, “Inferno is jampacked with tricks. And that shaky opening turns out to be one of them.”

The author is scheduled to appear this week on NBC’s Today Show, Comedy Central’s Colbert Report, MSNBC’s Morning Joe, PBS’s Charlie Rose and NPR’s Weekend Edition.

Library holds, while heavy, are not nearly as high as they were on Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl at its peak, averaging 2:1 on fairly aggressive ordering.

Ouch! In a review that will surely be a candidate for the next “Hatchet Job of the Year Award,” Michiko Kakutani excoriates John  le Carré’s 23rd novel, A Delicate Truth, (Penguin/Viking; Penguin Audio; Thorndike Large Print), which releases next week.

Earlier, one of Kakutani’s colleagues, Dwight Garner, wrote glowingly about the author in  New York Times Magazine, under the headline, “John le Carré Has Not Mellowed With Age,” calling A Delicate Truth, “an elegant yet embittered indictment of extraordinary rendition, American right-wing evangelical excess and the corporatization of warfare. It has a gently flickering love story and a jangling ending. And le Carré has not lost his ability to sketch, in a line or two, an entire character.” And, in the UK, The Guardian reports that, with this book, the author returns in “top form.”

Kakutani admits that the book offers one worthwhile bit, in the form of its “atmospheric, movielike opening.” Hollywood sees a movie in it; film rights were sold before publication. It was announced last week that screenwriter William Monahan (The Departed ) has been hired to write the adaptation.

The book already has a movie-like trailer.

The first adaptation of a novel by Laura Lippman, Every Secret Thing is filming this month in New York City and on Long Island, which is a bit surprising, since, like Lippman’s other novels, this one is set in Baltimore (in reviewing it, the Baltimore Sun said that “Baltimoreans will relish insiderish elements of the story”).

The novel is Lippman’s first standalone, after having already achieved success with seven mysteries featuring private investigator and former Baltimore reporter, Tess Monaghan. Turning from mysteries to much darker psychological suspense, she writes about two young women who return to their Baltimore neighborhood after seven years in juvenile detention, sentenced for kidnapping a baby who died in their care. Perhaps coincidentally, other children begin to disappear. Lippman builds suspense as the reader tries to figure out who is responsible.

Lippman has continued writing both Tess Monaghan mysteries and standalones. In a review of her most recent title, And When She Was Good, (HarperCollins/Morrow, 2012), the NYT‘s Janet Maslin pronounced that “Ms. Lippman’s stand-alone novels have been much more nuanced and interesting than her Monaghan books.”

Directed by Amy Berg, the film stars Dakota Fanning and Danielle Macdonald as the two young women. Also in the cast are Elizabeth Banks and Diane Lane.

The adaptation of  Joseph Finder’s thriller, Paranoia (Macmillan/St. Martin’s, 2004), originally scheduled for release in October has been moved up to Aug. 16. Below is more background on the novel from our earlier post.

Described as a ”high-tech corporate espionage thriller,” the movie features an impressive cast, including Liam Hemsworth (The Hunger Games), Gary Oldman, Harrison Ford, Amber Heard (The Rum Diary), and Richard Dreyfuss.

The plot concerns an ambitious young technologist, Adam (Hemsworth), who, after making a major misstep is blackmailed by his ruthless CEO (Gary Oldman) into spying on the company’s top rival, run by a character played by Harrison Ford. Adam finds himself living the life of his dreams, as a rich, successful young Manhattan bachelor but eventually has to find a way out from under his boss, “who will stop at nothing, even murder, to gain a multi-billion dollar advantage.”

After four spy thrillers, (including High Crimes, which was made into a movie in 2002, starring Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman), Joseph Finder began specializing in corporate espionage with the release of Paranoia, which was his breakout book. His most recent novels are the first two in a series, featuring Nick Heller; Vanished (Macmillan/St. Martin’s, 2009) and Buried Secrets (Macmillan/St. Martin’s, 2011).

The author notes on his blog that he doesn’t plan to write a sequel to Paranoia, but tells readers (take note, Hollywood) that if they like that book’s main character, they will like his new series character.

The NYT‘s hard-to-please critic, Michiko Kakutani, goes uncharacteristically ga-ga over a thriller, saying that Roger Hobbs, whose debut novel, Ghostman, (RH/Knopf; RH Audio; BOT; Thorndike Large Print) arrives tomorrow, “seizes our attention and holds it tight, not so much through his plotting or his characters but through his sheer, masterly use of details, and the authoritative, hard-boiled voice he has fashioned for [main character] Jack.”

She does find a flaw, however.  Jack seems “cobbled cobbled together from random traits pasted onto a deliberately enigmatic core that lacks the existential power of Stark’s Parker or Lee Child’s Reacher. Ghostman would have been way more powerful with a more potent and coherent hero, but weirdly this lapse does not prevent the novel from holding the reader’s attention.”

Check your holds.

More drum rolls arrive today for The Dinner by Dutch author Herman Koch (RH/Hogarth; AudioGo; Thorndike Large Print coming soon). Following an “Exclusive First Read” on the NPR Web site on Tuesday (see our earlier story) , the Wall Street Journal, calls it “A European GONE GIRL,” saying this “sly psychological thriller that hinges on a horrific crime and its consequences for two families, has become one of this spring’s most anticipated suspense novels.”

The book doesn’t arrive until Feb. 12, but it’s time for libraries to re-order. Holds are already as high as 15:1 on modest orders.

On the Today Show this morning, New York Post TV columnist Linda Stasi discussed her first novel The Sixth Station (Macmillan/Forge) released last week. It is described as a “religious thriller” about “one journalist’s exploration into a man who is either the Second Coming or Revelation’s anti-Christ.”

Booklist called it a ” riveting first novel” noting that “Dan Brown and Steve Berry fans have another controversial novel in which to lose themselves.” Indeed, the cover carries a quote from Berry, “Mayhem, madness, passion…you’ll be gripping the pages so tight you knuckles will turn white.” It is also blurbed by Bill O’Reilly. Personal friend Liz Smith gushed over it (admitting she only is half-way through it) in the Huffington Post.

Kirkus was less enthusiastic, calling the protagonist “overly plucky” and saying the author, “trots out the usual tricks in this provocative but often clunky thriller.”

Libraries have ordered it cautiously and holds are in line with ordering. Excerpt here.

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Before it was published, Ridley Scott bought the film rights to  Child 44, (Hachette/Grand Central), Tom Rob Smith’s heavily promoted debut, set in the 1950′s era Soviet Union. It went on to become a best seller and the author has completed the trilogy with The Secret Speech (2009) and  Agent 6, (2012).

Today, Deadline reports that filming may begin this year, with Daniel Espinosa (Safe House) directing and Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Rises) in talks to star. Noomi Rapace (the Swedish-language Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) is in talks to play his wife, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Departing from his series characters, Joe Pike and Elvis Cole, Robert Crais’s new book, Suspect, (Penguin/Putnam; Brilliance Audio; Wheeler Large Print; Brilliance Audio), features a character of the canine persuasion; a military dog named Maggie, who is traumatized after losing her handler in an explosion.

Crais tells USA Today that Maggie is inspired by his own close relationship with a dog. He wants the book to bring attention to an often overlooked group, but says,

First and foremost I am a commercial writer and I hope to entertain people. But having said that, I’m in love with the relationship between humans and dogs, and the more I learned about what our military working dogs are doing, I wanted to at least share with people what an important role these animals have in all our lives.

The book may not remain a standalone for long. Says Crais, “ I have this horrible weakness. I fall in love with my characters. Suspect started as a one-shot, but I just love Maggie so much, and I love Maggie and Scott and what they have going.”.”

On the Today Show this morning, the title of Dan Brown’s next book was revealed. Inferno will be released on Tuesday, May 14th and again features symbologist Robert Langdon. According to publisher Doubleday’s plot description,

In the heart of Italy, Harvard professor of symbology, Robert Langdon, is drawn into a harrowing world centered on one of history’s most enduring and mysterious literary masterpieces…Dante’s Inferno.

Against this backdrop, Langdon battles a chilling adversary and grapples with an ingenious riddle that pulls him into a landscape of classic art, secret passageways, and futuristic science. Drawing from Dante’s dark epic poem, Langdon races to find answers and decide whom to trust…before the world is irrevocably altered.

The Today Show revealed the title by enlisting fans in a contest that was so popular, it brought down the host site:

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Below are the various formats, with ISBN’s and prices. We will update this post with the Today Show video as soon as it is available.

Inferno, by Dan Brown, (RH/Knopf/Doubleday), 5/14/13

Hardcover, ISBN: 9780385537858;  $29.95/$33.00 CAN

Ebook, iSBN: 9780385537865; $14.99/$16.99 CAN

Audio CD, ISBN: 9780804128766; $50.00/$55.00 CAN

BOT CD  9780804128780

Abridged CD: 9780804147972;  $30.00/$35.00 CAN

Large Print ISBN: 9780804121064; $30.00/$35.00 CAN

MSNBC’s Morning Joe went literary on Friday, interviewing two authors — George Saunders, whose fourth book of short stories, The Tenth of December, (Random House; BOT), was called the best book you’ll read this year by the NYT Magazine and James Grippando, author of ten legal thrillers.

Saunders manages to slip in a quote from Terry Eagleton, “capitalism plunders the sensuality of the body.”

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Grippando talks about the premise of for his new book, Blood Money (Harper; HarperLuxe), which is based on the aftermath of the Casey Anthony murder trial.

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Speaking of William Boyd, who is currently at work on a new James Bond novel, his 2006 spy novel, Restless, has been made into a two-part series which concludes on the Sundance Channel tomorrow. Charlotte Rampling has been nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for her starring role.

Unfortunately, Salon writes that she is “the only great thing about Restlesss … But sometimes seeing Charlotte Rampling holding an outsize firearm like she intends to use it is good enough.” The NYT indicates viewers would be better off reading the book, saying that the producers ”have turned an entertaining and suspenseful novel into a surprisingly ordinary television production.”

Originally published in 2006, Restless is also available as a tie-in:

Restless: TV tie-in William Boyd Retail Price: $16.00 Paperback: 336 pages Publisher: Bloomsbury USA – (2012-11-27) ISBN / EAN: 1620402963 / 9781620402962

Taking advantage of Bond fever (Skyfall is still #1 in the box office, weeks after opening in November and has topped every new release since, including Spielberg’s Lincoln and even the final movie in the Twilight series), some news was released about the next title in the Bond book franchise, coming in fall, 2013.

It’s not much news, however. William Boyd, selected by the Ian Fleming estate to write the next novel, told the UK’s Radio Times, “All I will say is it’s set in 1969. Fleming died in 1964. He was in his mid-50s, so conceivably if he’d looked after himself a bit better, hadn’t smoked and drunk so much, he might have written a James Bond novel in that year.” The title of the upcoming book has not been released.

Boyd has not seen Skyfall, saying, “In the films Bond is a cartoon character, but in the novels he is far more troubled, nuanced and interesting.”

Recent attempts at reviving Bond in print have not met with as much success as the films. Jeffery Deaver published Carte Blanche, in 2011 (S&S). It was a NYT hardcover best seller for 4 weeks. Sebastian Faulks’ Devil May Care (RH/Doubleday, 2008) also spent a few weeks on the hardcover list. 

The film adaptation of S.J. Watson’s best selling novel, Before I Go To Sleep (Harper, 2011), is moving along.  Nicole Kidman is set to play the lead role as a woman who has lost her memory. Her doctor suggests that she record each day’s events. In the process, she discovers that things are not what they seem. Variety reports that Mark Strong (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) will play the doctor.

Don’t be fooled by the poster; shooting hasn’t begun. Release date is expected in late 2013.

James Cameron has optioned Taylor Stevens’ debut thriller, The Informationist (RH/Crown, 2011), with plans to direct it.

It’s “one of the most cinematic books I’ve ever read,” Cameron’s producing partner Jon Landau tells the L.A. Times, and it has “all the classic Jim Cameron elements — a female protagonist who is smart, physically adept and skilled, great action, an unexpected love story.” He also notes that Cameron found the book himself, “Jim is a reading sponge” (curiously, though, none of his previous movies have been based on books).

This project may be a long time coming; Cameron is currently wrestling with two Avatar sequels; back in Sept., he told the L.A. Times that writing the two scripts at the same time (they will be shot back-to-back), is a daunting task.

The Informationist, introduces Vanessa “Michael” Munroe. In reviewing the book, USA Today said that Munroe,

…evokes the spirit and intelligence of the gutsy, damaged Salander [from Stieg Larsson's books], but she’s far from derivative…Much will be made of the similarities between Munroe and Salander. But in some ways, Munroe’s brooding personality and her ability to blend in to her surroundings bring to mind the provocative Jason Bourne…Thank goodness a sequel to this fiery novel is in the works.

Munroe’s second outing came in The Innocent (RH/Crown, 8/28/12). The next will be The Doll, (RH/Crown, 6/4/13). Cameron will have plenty of material for sequels; the author is planning a seven-book series.