The Rule of Four: A Novel

Author: Caldwell, Ian

Brand: RANDOM HOUSE GROUP

Color: Multicolor

Features:

• Dial Press

Binding: paperback

Format: Deckle Edge

Number Of Pages: 400

Release Date: 21-08-2012

Part Number: 9780385337120

Details: Product Description
“One part The Da Vinci Code, one part The Name of the Rose and one part A Separate Peace . . . a smart, swift, multitextured tale that both entertains and informs.”—San Francisco Chronicle
 

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

 
Princeton. Good Friday, 1999. On the eve of graduation, two friends are a hairsbreadth from solving the mysteries of the
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a Renaissance text that has baffled scholars for centuries. Famous for its hypnotic power over those who study it, the five-hundred-year-old
Hypnerotomachia may finally reveal its secrets—to Tom Sullivan, whose father was obsessed with the book, and Paul Harris, whose future depends on it.
 
As the deadline looms, research has stalled—until a vital clue is unearthed: a long-lost diary that may prove to be the key to deciphering the ancient text. But when a longtime student of the book is murdered just hours later, a chilling cycle of deaths and revelations begins—one that will force Tom and Paul into a fiery drama, spun from a book whose power and meaning have long been misunderstood.
 

“Profoundly erudite . . . the ultimate puzzle-book.”—The New York Times Book Review
Review
“Profoundly erudite . . . the ultimate puzzle-book.”—
The New York Times Book Review
 
“One part
The Da Vinci Code, one part
The Name of the Rose and one part
A Separate Peace . . . a smart, swift, multitextured tale that both entertains and informs.”—
San Francisco Chronicle
 
“Ingenious . . . The real treat here is the process of discovery.”
—The New York Times
 
“Compulsively readable.”—
People (4 stars)
 
“If F. Scott Fitzgerald, Umberto Eco, and Dan Brown teamed up to write a novel, the result would be
The Rule of Four.”—Nelson DeMille
About the Author
Ian Caldwell is the author of a forthcoming novel set inside the Vatican. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in European history from Princeton University, and lives near Washington, D.C., with his wife and three sons.
Dustin Thomason is also the author of
12.21.
He graduated from Harvard College and received his M.D. from Columbia University. Thomason has written and produced several television series, including
Lie to Me. He lives in Venice Beach, California. The two have been best friends since they were eight years old.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One
Strange thing, time. It weighs most on those who have it least. Nothing is lighter than being young with the world on your shoulders; it gives you a feeling of possibility so seductive, you know there must be something more important you could be doing than studying for exams.

I can see myself now, the night it all began. I'm lying back on the old red sofa in our dorm room, wrestling with Pavlov and his dogs in my introductory psychology book, wondering why I never fulfilled my science requirement as a freshman like everyone else. A pair of letters sits on the coffee table in front of me, each containing a vision of what I could be doing next year. The night of Good Friday has fallen, cold April in Princeton, New Jersey, and with only a month of college left I'm no different from anyone else in the class of 1999: I'm having trouble getting my mind off the future.

Charlie is sitting on the floor by the cube refrigerator, playing with the Magnetic Shakespeare someone left in our room last week. The Fitzgerald novel he's supposed to be reading for his final paper in English 151w is spread open on the floor with its spine broken, like a butterfly somebody stepped on, and he's forming and re-forming sentences from magnets with Shakespearean words on them. If you ask him why he's not reading Fitzgerald, he'll grunt and say there's no

point. As far as he's concerned, literature is just an educated man's shell game, three-card monte for the college crowd: what you see is never what you get. For a science-minded guy like Charlie, that's the height of perversity. He's headed for medical school

EAN: 9780385337120

Package Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches

Languages: English