Rule of Four

At the centre of this thriller's plot is the very real, very famous and very mysterious book "Hypnerotomachia Poliophili", one of the most important documents of Renaissance imagination and fantasy.

Ian Caldwell's and Dustin Thomason's "Rule of Four" builds on an hypothetical decipherment of the Hypnerotomachia's meaning by two Princeton students.

The book is mildly entertaining without ever really getting a grip on the reader. Its popularity owes a lot to the "Da Vinci Code" phenomenon: romanticized and distorted historical facts shrouded in controversy, ancient mysteries and encryptions have become the latest recipe for producing best sellers.

Synopsis

Tom Sullivan, about to graduate from Princeton, is haunted by the violent death of his father, an academic who devoted his life to one of the rarest, most complex books in the world. Coded in seven languages, the Hypnerotomachia Poliophili, an intricate mathematical mystery and a tale of love and arcane brutality, has baffled scholars since 1499. Tom's friend Paul is similarly obsessed and when a long-lost diary surfaces they finally seem to make a breakthrough. Only hours later, a fellow researcher is murdered and the two friends suddenly find themselves in great danger. Working desperately to expose the book's secret, they slowly uncover a Renaissance tale of passion and blood, a hidden crypt and a secret worth dying to protect...