Thank You Jesus (and a shout-out to Mary Magdalene)

Victory for Dan Brown! Praise Jesus!

As far as the British Court of Appeal is concerned, Mr. Brown most definitely did not steal the words right out from under the pens of Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. The whole Da Vinci Code book, cover to cover, is Brown's own, a work of his personal imagination.

Writers of historical fiction are exhaling again, knowing that they can make use of historical sources and other people's non-fiction books to create their flights of fancy. We can all acknowledge the "vast amount of skill and labor" that goes in to crafting the non-fiction books that form the basis of historical fiction, but that does not spell plagiarism, and the Appeal Court agreed.

Realistic historical fiction is good when it rings true, and a novel rings true when it has been well researched. Even something as fanciful as the Jesus and Mary Magdalene union, as presented in Dan Brown's book, became a believable story because of the use of so-called evidence which was sprinkled (heavily) throughout the novel. Where else does anyone find facts and theoretical proofs but in non-fiction? Making use of those same facts does not equate with plagiarism, because the novelist is making up a story, spinning a yarn.

Lawyers for the claimants are still not satisfied, however, and they may be sorry that they went after Random House as publishers, rather than Dan Brown as plagiarist. They still wonder over the role that Mrs. Brown played as researcher and note-taker, intimating that she was the intellectual property thief, but Baigent and Leigh are up to their necks at the moment and this may be the end of it. As this was tried in England, they are responsible for all court costs as the losing party, and it's said they owe somewhere around $6 million.

The Da Vinci phenomenon pretty much ended when the Hollywood film tanked. The pair who wrote the non-fiction source of the novel's plot get nothing from the millions that Dan Brown earned on his book. The author did not lift passages wholesale from the Baigent and Leigh masterpiece, but he used it to fuel his imagination. The authors made their money on the sale of the book to Mrs. Dan Brown, and that's all they're getting out of the DaVinci Code wallet.