New tomes may catch ‘Da Vinci Code’ wave

In the early months of the new year, expect a few novels with some very familiar story lines.

“Labyrinth,” by Kate Mosse, features a rival sect to the Catholic church and a search for the Holy Grail.

In “The Templar Legacy,” a thriller by Steve Berry, a former government agent attempts to unravel a mystery about an order of knights whose power rivaled the pope’s.

Matilde Asensi’s “The Last Cato” features the head of the Vatican’s secret archive and his efforts to solve a murder with clues dating back to biblical times.

“It’s hard not to have ‘The Da Vinci Code’ on our minds, as it has become the cultural phenomenon of our time,” says Rene Alegria, publisher of Rayo, a Hispanic imprint of HarperCollins that is releasing the English translation of “The Last Cato.”

Nearly three years after it was first published, “The Da Vinci Code” has more than 25 million copies in print worldwide, inspired dozens of parodies and critiques and increased interest in religious thrillers, art history, Gnostic texts and speculations about the life of Jesus.

With “The Da Vinci Code” movie, starring Tom Hanks, due out in the spring or early summer, publishers and booksellers expect yet another surge for the Dan Brown novel and for books like it.

“This is the hottest trend out there,” says Barnes & Noble fiction buyer Sessalee Hensley. “I think a large part of the ‘Da Vinci Code’ audience will go for these new books.”

Alegria and other publishers acknowledge that “The Da Vinci Code” has had an impact on the marketplace but insist that their books hold up on their own.

Javier Sierra’s “Secret Supper,” coming out from Atria with a first printing of 350,000, “combines mystery, intrigue and death in a riveting thriller that reveals the unknown secrets behind Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper,’ ” according to a statement on Sierra’s Web site.

Dutton Books is releasing “The Last Templar,” written by Raymond Khoury and centering on a theft during a “Treasures of the Vatican” exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with one stolen piece dating back to the Crusades.

Alegria notes that “The Last Cato” and other upcoming releases may capitalize on “The Da Vinci Code” but were actually conceived earlier.

Dutton’s Mitch Hoffman agrees that thrillers about art and secret codes were around well before Brown’s book. “The Da Vinci Code” has not invented a new kind of book, he says, but defined a new market.

“It’s like legal thrillers after John Grisham and Scott Turow,” Hoffman says. “There were always books with lawyers running around before it solidified into a category, when all manners of books were called ‘legal thrillers.’ I do feel we may be seeing a similar thing in the wake of ‘The Da Vinci Code.’ “