[Adrian Fry]

Popular writers are less easy to pastiche because style is seldom their point, though we've all had fun at the expense of Dan Brown. The problem for Lucy is whether she can be confident that enough readers will 'get' some of the more arcane contributions. And yet, I'd have thought that The Spectator was a venue where something a little more out of the way might be attempted; I've gotten an Anthony Powell and an Irvine Welsh into the winning box in my time.

And Chris, you're absolutely right, as ever.

[Brian Allgar]

What makes Dan Brown a satisfying target is not because it's easy to parody his non-existent style, but because assembling a mish-mash of half-baked, implausible, and frequently risible ideas is - ahem! - what many of us are good at. The difference is that we do it for laughs, whereas the appalling Mr Brown takes himself, I fear, all too seriously.

[Gail White]

Although I didn't recognize all of Adrian's proposed writers, I do think we could do something with Ivy Compton Burnett, who wrote one of my favorite sentences in literature:

"I've been at the British Museum today, reading the book I'm writing."