Normally, I know better than to look at award lists

but I must have been in a weakened state or something, because I forgot and noticed that "Best Mystery or Thriller" went to Dan Brown's _Inferno_ on the GoodReads Best of the Year list. Granted, I only got about half way through it before the pseudo-science and the demented female sidekick made me give up, but I found it neither thrilling nor mysterious. The flat descriptions and repetative phrases did lead me to develop a theory that "Dan Brown" is actually a project concocted by mad grad students to persuade the world that a computer can write, and they have woven a mind-virus into the paper and the digital bits that compels normal people to believe that this is great writing, kind of like that mind-virus that cats use on people.