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The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason tries to be many things. It wants to be a murder mystery, an ancient secrets thriller, a coming-of-age novel, a philosophical tome, and an exploration of the academic life.
The story revolves around two college roommates, Thomas Sullivan and Paul Harris, who are brought together as much by coincidence as by fate. Tom is the son of a long-dead scholar who devoted his life to uncovering the secrets behind the Hypnerotomachia. Paul, an orphan, is obsessed with the enigmatic text and spends four years at Princeton trying to fill in the voids left by Tom's father and his fellow academics. Tom falls into the book's lure and accompanies Paul during long hours of poring over source documents and translation, until he comes to his senses and sees what his mother had told him about the book all along: it "may never have had much outward charm, but it has an ugly woman's wiles, the slow addictive tug of inner mystery."
Paul's search continues, pushed on by a mentor (a former colleague of Tom's father) and a graduate student who is also fascinated by the text. When a revealing diary is found, someone is murdered on campus and their dorm room is ransacked, the race is on to learn as much as they can about the hidden crypt that lies at the heart of the text.
The Rule of Four is a worthy addition to anyone's library who appreciates a suspenseful and thought-provoking novel.
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