Best-selling author Dan Brown, best known for the Da Vinci Code, has said he's open to the idea of setting a book in Ireland.
Brown was speaking at the Web Summit in Dublin where he was one of the guest speakers.
The 51-year-old New Hampshire native has sold hundreds of millions of books worldwide and has courted plenty of controversy from the Vatican for his views on the Church and Christianity.
Now it seems we could expect to see his hero Robert Langdon dashing around Ireland in one of his next novels - no doubt deciphering symbols in a race against time to solve a fiendishly complicated crime.
"If you'd asked me a week ago if I'd base a book in Ireland I'd have said jeez I'm not sure. Today? Quite possibly. But that's as much as I'm going to give you", he said.
While not exactly a definite yes by any stretch, the statement is bound to delight his many fans here who've helped all his books reach the top of the best-seller list including his last book, Inferno. That's now being made into a movie with Tom Hanks reprising his role as Langdon.
Tom Hanks, director Ron Howard, Dan Brown and other cast members
There's certainly no shortage of source material in Celtic mythology. How about the famously obscure spiral symbols at Newgrange or maybe some hidden meaning in the illustrations in the Book of Kells? Or there's always the delightfully bonkers Freemasons Hall in Dublin as a potential setting? And let's not even start with the countless megalithic stone monuments dotted around the country.
One of the rooms in Dublin's Freemasons Hall
Brown was also asked if he were to set a book here, would he make reference to the country's increasingly fractious relationship with the Catholic Church.
"I've always been fascinated in the effects of religion and certainly the conflicts that religion causes, so the answer is yes. It would certainly be a fascinating place to set a book", he said.
He also said that revelations of abuse and cover-ups within the church were "heartbreaking".
"When the people that are the moral leaders, that are supposed to be our spiritual guideposts, have those sorts of human foibles - that's heartbreaking. But at the same time that's entirely understandable. The church, like any organisation, is made up of people and people are imperfect. And I don't think that's its any more shocking that find that sort of abuse in a large organisation like the church, as it would be in a large corporation", he said.
