ReviewsOfBooks.com

Your one stop for finding multiple professional reviews of recently released books.

The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason

At the center of The Rule of Four are four Princeton roommates approaching graduation and an ancient text called the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. It's a 15th-century book written in several languages, and is full of secrets, puzzles, and clues that are supposed to lead to a treasure buried in a vault in Rome. One of the roommates, Paul, is doing his senior thesis on the book and believes he's stumbled across a clue that might solve the mysteries within the book. Another roommate, Tom, is hoping to redeem his father's work on the Hypnerotomachia. Not only is this a thriller as the students unravel secrets that others are willing to kill for, it also highlights the internecine rivalries of academic life and the friendships and bonding of the four men on the cusp of adulthood. The Rule of Four, often compared to The Da Vinci Code, has received mostly positive reviews with BookPage saying, "Riveting, poignant and intensely intimate, The Rule of Four is a thinking person's thriller of the highest order."