This is a book column, mainly, not a movie column, so I won’t overdo it. But I have to mention the forthcoming movie version of “The Da Vinci Code,” the outrageously successful Dan Brown thriller that has now sold 12 million copies in America and 40 million worldwide.

Sony is releasing the guaranteed blockbuster next month (May 19 to be precise) and, frankly, I can’t wait, practically shifting my weight from foot to foot like a kid who drank three glasses of milk and has been waiting in line for a long time.

With Tom Hanks as the star and Ron Howard as the director (the two worked together on “Splash” and “Apollo 13”), there is some bankable talent above the credits, even if virtually every other actor is foreign – a calculated attempt at authenticity. Mr. Brown himself is the executive producer, so there should be no excuse for anything having gone wrong. And after Sony shelled out a cool $6 million for the movie rights (which, if it isn’t the most ever paid, is close enough not to quibble), nothing better have gone wrong.

“The Da Vinci Code” is ideally structured for the movies because all the action takes place over a 12-hour period (which is about how long it takes to read the book). Since the novel is a nonstop thriller, how could the film fail to be?

One area in which authenticity will suffer (but you wouldn’t know if someone didn’t tell you) involves the most famous Leonardo da Vinci painting, the “Mona Lisa.” The crew was not allowed to shine light on the famous portrait hanging in the Louvre, so a replica had to be used.

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Do you like statistics? How about these:

* James Patterson’s Alex Cross series is the best-selling detective series of the past 20 years, with more than 25 million copies sold. He had four books published in 2005, all of which made their debut on the bestseller list in the no. 1 position, a feat never before achieved by any novelist.

* Speaking of best sellers, the indefatigable Nora Roberts can point to the mind-numbing fact that, over the past 23 years,an average of 23 of her books have sold every minute. This evidence of the apparently insatiable demand for her type of fiction comes from the author’s own collection of trivia, and she has no reason to exaggerate.

* Not a statistic, but since we’re talking about large numbers,here’s a little something to give comfort to aspiring writers who have hit a bump in the road.Michael Crichton,one of the world’s most successful authors, sold his first effort, a travel article, to the New YorkTimes when he was 14 years old. That encouraged him to continue his writing career, so he sent articles and short stories to magazines at a ferocious pace. For the next 10 years, all of them were rejected. He says he could have papered a room with all the rejection slips. He has no reason to exaggerate, either.

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In a scene that could have been taken directly from a James Bond movie, an auction house in Phoenix put up for sale a sexy Silver Birch Aston Martin a couple of months ago.It was one of four cars built for use in the Bond films “Goldfinger” (1964) and “Thunderball” (1965).

The auctioneer, dressed in a Bondian tuxedo, drove the car onto the stage, then demonstrated features that most of us wouldn’t need to run down to the grocery store for a loaf of pumpernickel, including machine guns.

It sold for $2.09 million to a European collector. It made a tidy profit for the owner, who had paid less than $10,000 for it in 1970.

Ironically, the car was used primarily for promotional tours and was only minimally used in the films. The car used in the action scenes was stolen years ago from the Boca Raton, Fla., collector who owned it; his insurance company reportedly paid him millions for the lost vehicle.

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Is it possible that James Bond, Michael Crichton, Nora Roberts, James Patterson and Dan Brown are not intellectual enough for you? Then, how about spending an evening at the PEN World Voices Festival on April 28 to see a panel titled “Taking Crime Fiction Seriously”?

The entire PEN festival runs through April 30 and features 134 writers and critics from 44 countries. There are 60 scheduled events, including panels, lectures, readings, and one-on-one conversations. Among the participants will be the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, who will deliver the inaugural address, Margaret Atwood, Nadine Gordimer, Toni Morrison, Martin Amis, E.L. Doctorow, Zadie Smith, festival chairman Salman Rushdie, and numerous others, some of whom have umlauts and accent marks in their names.

Mr. Rushdie hopes the festival will inform more people about the vital role that writers play in the public discourse on the most vital issues of the day. “Unlike most countries,” Mr. Rushdie graciously stated,”America does not have a strong history of authors acting as cultural critics and public intellectuals.” Perhaps the festival will introduce Mr. Rushdie to such names from America’s cultural and intellectual vacuum as John Steinbeck, James Baldwin, John Updike, Arthur Miller, Norman Mailer, Eugene O’Neill, and Gore Vidal.

The part of the festival that matters, however, will occur on April 28, 6-7:30 p.m., at the Italian Cultural Institute at 686 Park Avenue, when Oonagh Stransky will moderates a panel of Boris Akunin (Russia), Massimo Carlotto (Italy), and Henning Mankell (Sweden). The international mystery stars will address the topic “Taking Crime Fiction Seriously,” attempting to describe how crime writers “combine literary prowess with white-knuckle reading,” “why people love crime novels,” and “their key influences and the role this genre plays in the collective imagination.”

I’m sure it will be very earnest and informative. For more information about the festival and for tickets, which are free, call 212-879-4242 ext. 364, or visit www.pen.org.

This should be so intellectually stimulating it will send you into the night screaming for a Nora Roberts book.

Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual “Best American Mystery Stories.” He can be reached at ottopenzler@mysteriousbookshop.com.