ET Decodes Dan Brown's 'The Lost Symbol'

Dan Brown's highly anticipated new Robert Langdon thriller, The Lost Symbol, hit stores today and it's already flying off the shelves! Our own Mary Hart sat down for a one-on-one with the bestselling The Da Vinci Code author to get to the bottom of his latest mystery…

Mystery is the key word, as Dan has kept the plot details under extremely tight wraps until today's release. "You want your readers to experience the book with a clean slate," he tells Mary. "You don't want people to have told them how it ends or what some of the secrets are, and there are a lot of people who wanted advanced copies of this book and there was a lot of pressure to keep it very, very secret."

What we can say is that the action of The Lost Symbol takes place in Washington D.C. and it centers on the Freemasons, a real but mysterious society that reputedly included George Washington as a member. A severed hand is one of the clues, but that's all we'll give away. So, how much of the story is fact and how much is fiction?

"Ninety-seven-point-three percent is fact," jokes Dan, explaining, "It's tough to put a number on it. Clearly, I do something very specific and intentional in these books, that is to weave a lot of fact into a fictional story, and I think that's one reason that the books, in addition to being thrillers, feel very relevant to our lives."

Of course, the next logical question is will The Lost Symbol become a movie with the Oscar-winning team of Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, once again guiding Tom Hanks as Langdon?

"I will tell you that The Lost Symbol is certainly going to be made," says Dan. "It is in pre-production, and the rest of the details are absolutely secret at this point."

Finally, has The Lost Symbol already sold out of its first printing of five million copies? That's just a rumor, but given that Dan's other Robert Langdon mysteries sold incredibly well, (Angels & Demons moved almost 40 million copies, while The Da Vinci Code sold 80 million copies worldwide), there are high hopes in the publishing industry, and Dan reports, "The sales rate, I guess I'm hearing, is through the roof and everybody's happy."

Watch ET for more with Dan Brown on Wednesday!

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