Dan Brown’s ‘sordid life’ of lies and lovers

The Da Vinci Code’s intrigue is nothing compared with Dan Brown’s life, including claims he siphoned money from a joint account for his four lovers.

Dan and Blythe Brown married in 1997 and separated in 2018.

The novel that catapulted Dan Brown to stardom was a tale of deceit and intrigue with a secret relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene at its heart.

Now a court has been told by Brown’s former wife that he led his own “life of lies”, siphoning money from their joint accounts to buy presents for a Dutch horse trainer who was one of his four lovers.

In a lawsuit filed on Monday at Rockingham superior court in New Hampshire, Blythe Brown says that her former husband, who is 56, engaged in “unlawful and egregious conduct” during their marriage.

She claims that the author of The Da Vinci Code “secretly siphoned” off some of their money “to conduct sordid, extramarital affairs”.

The couple married in 1997 and divorced last December. Mrs Brown, who is 12 years older than her former husband, is suing him for misrepresenting their shared wealth in a sworn financial affidavit that formed part of their divorce agreement, and for intentionally and negligently inflicting emotional distress. Before their separation Forbes put his annual earnings at $20 million; his net worth has been estimated at more than $150 million.

Tom Hanks (L) and Audrey Tautou with Dan Brown in Cannes for the launch of the 2006 film 'The Da Vinci Code'.

“This lawsuit is about standing up for myself and asserting my self-worth,” Mrs Brown, a painter and art historian, told The Boston Globe, which first reported the lawsuit. “I have continually tried to absorb the shocking truth withheld during our divorce that Dan had been leading a double life for years during our marriage.

“I trusted this man for decades as my life’s love … I don’t recognise the man that Dan has become. It is time to reveal his deceit and betrayal. After so much pain, it is time for truth.”

In the lawsuit, Mrs Brown says that in 2014 Brown “started to act distant, dressed differently, and instigated arguments”. Four years later he told her that he wanted to separate but that they should “remain best friends”. Mrs Brown moved out of their home in New Hampshire in August 2018.

The couple did not have any children. Brown told The Mail on Sunday in 2017: “We’ve got seven books, those are the kids.”

While Mrs Brown agreed at the time of the divorce with Brown that she had “full knowledge” of the couple’s wealth, her lawsuit states: “This was untrue. Dan had, for a number of years, secretly siphoned funds from [our] marital assets, at least in part to finance his activities with his mistresses, including … a young horse trainer who lived in Holland.”

The trainer, identified in the lawsuit only as JP, was a specialist in Friesian horses. Mrs Brown brought her to the US in 2013 to train one of the couple’s horses. Mrs Brown alleges that Brown began an affair with JP in 2014 while she was staying at the couple’s home recovering from shoulder surgery. Mrs Brown claims that he then secretly bought her a horse worth $345,000, a new car, a horse transport truck, and paid to renovate her flat in the Netherlands.

“The net effect of these transgressions substantially reduced the marital estate,” Mrs Brown alleges. She claimed that when she confronted him this January he replied: “I’ve done bad things with a lot of people” and admitted to also having an affair with a hairdresser.

Mrs Brown says that she then found out that he had conducted further affairs with a “political official” and his personal trainer.

Brown denied the allegations, saying he was “stunned” by her “false claims”. He told The Boston Globe: “On the day that Blythe and I married, I never remotely thought that we eventually would grow so far apart.”

He said that the financial affidavit he signed was a complete list of their assets when they divorced, adding: “I swore to the truthfulness of what was contained on that list, and I stand by that financial statement today.

“We were fortunate that we equally were blessed with very substantial assets with which to move forward.”

Mrs Brown was a close collaborator on her husband’s books. When he was accused of plagiarising parts of The Da Vinci Code in the British courts in 2006, the court heard that Mrs Brown had scoured religious and historical texts for her husband. Brown’s publisher won the case. The fascination with his tales of secret conspiracies was so great that the High Court judge played along by inserting his own code into the judgment.

In 2017 Brown told The New York Times that Blythe “has a fixation with death”, adding: “Once she literally took me on a date to a cemetery.”

The Da Vinci Code, published in 2003, was his fourth novel. Despite being panned by the critics, it has been translated into at least 44 languages and was adapted into a film starring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou. Brown has since written a further three books featuring the same protagonist, Professor Robert Langdon. According to the latest available figures, 200 million copies of his books are in print.

Turn-up for the books

– When The Da Vinci Code was published it was Dan Brown’s fourth book but his first success.

– He quit work as an English teacher to pursue writing but his first three books each had initial print runs of under 10,000 and he sold copies from his car. “I was seriously considering not writing again,” Brown said later. Instead he changed his publisher and agent. The Da Vinci Code, a thriller based on the idea that the Merovingian kings of France were descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene, topped The New York Times bestseller list within a week of its release in 2003. It stayed there for 136 consecutive weeks. By 2009 it had sold 80 million copies worldwide.

– Critical opprobrium was no barrier to success. Salman Rushdie said The Da Vinci Code was “a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name”. Stephen King said Brown’s works were the “mental equivalent” of a macaroni cheese ready-meal.

The Times