Crack the code!

Airport bookstore clerks around the world breathed a sigh of relief with this nooz:

LONDON (Reuters) - Dan Brown's follow-up novel to his global bestseller "The Da Vinci Code" won't be ready by the end of the year as originally expected, his publisher said on Friday.

"We don't know when it's coming, but it's out of the schedule for this year," said Larry Finlay, managing director for Transworld Publishers in London, a division of Bertelsmann-owned Random House.

"At one point we were hoping for it around October or November, but now it's looking like 2007," he told Reuters, confirming a report in the Bookseller trade publication.

The book, whose title and plot are as secretly guarded as the religious sects Brown writes about, remains unfinished, with Brown having been embroiled in a high-profile plagiarism lawsuit and the publicity surrounding an upcoming film adaptation of "The Da Vinci Code" starring Tom Hanks.

Neither Brown nor his agent in New York could immediately be reached to comment on reasons for the new book's delay.

The working title on the novel had been "The Solomon Key" though it was reportedly dropped.

Speculative books such as "Secrets of the Widow's Son" and "The Solomon Key and Beyond", as well as fan Web sites, have been trying to crack the plot, which Brown himself has hinted will deal with the ancient society of Masons.

Oooh! Ooooh! Mistah Kotter! Mistaaaaaah Kotter!

Precisely, Mister Kotter!

This might become the most famous case of writer's block since Ralph Ellison.

Personally, though, I'm looking forward to his version of The North Beach Ratkins Diet, and other truths protected by the Knights Templar but hidden to you by the machinations of third century Bishop Ireneus and the Satanic Popes who followed him. And the Jesuits, they had something too. And the Jews. Chapter One: Eat Less and Exercise.