From Publishers Weekly
Caldwell and Thomason's intriguing intellectual suspense novel stars four brainy roommates at Princeton, two of whom have links to a mysterious 15th-century manuscript, the
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. This rare text (a real book) contains embedded codes revealing the location of a buried Roman treasure. Comparisons to
The Da Vinci Code are inevitable, but Caldwell and Thomason's book is the more cerebral-and better written-of the two: think Dan Brown by way of Donna Tartt and Umberto Eco. The four seniors are Tom Sullivan, Paul Harris, Charlie Freeman and Gil Rankin. Tom, the narrator, is the son of a Renaissance scholar who spent his life studying the ancient book, "an encyclopedia masquerading as a novel, a dissertation on everything from architecture to zoology." The manuscript is also an endless source of fascination for Paul, who sees it as "a siren, a fetching song on a distant shore, all claws and clutches in person. You court her at your risk." This debut novel's range of topics almost rivals the
Hypnerotomachia's itself, including etymology, Renaissance art and architecture, Princeton eating clubs, friendship, steganography (riddles) and self-interpreting manuscripts. It's a complicated, intricate and sometimes difficult read, but that's the point and the pleasure. There are murders, romances, dangers and detection, and by the end the heroes are in a race not only to solve the puzzle, but also to stay alive. Readers might be tempted to buy their own copy of the
Hypnerotomachia and have a go at the puzzle. After all, Caldwell and Thomason have done most of the heavy deciphering-all that's left is to solve the final riddle, head for Rome and start digging.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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The Da Vinci Code started the ball rolling, but these days you can hardly pick up a thriller that doesn't involve codes lurking in ancient literature. Tom is a senior at Princeton, torn between solitary scholarship and engagement with the world. His father sacrificed his life attempting to decipher the incredible secret of
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a rare Renaissance text, and now his brilliant friend, Paul, is on the verge of cracking it himself. Tom resists its pull, but as a half-millennium of history comes to a head in one bloody weekend on campus, he finds himself sucked into its vortex anyway. The authors, best friends since childhood, have made an impressive debut, a coming-of-age novel in the guise of a thriller, packed with history (real and invented) and intellectual excitement. But despite their command of language and arcana, the book occasionally betrays its origins as a post-college project. Tom's romance with a sophomore, for example, lacks heft as competition for the
Hypnerotomachia. Given the latter's huge historical implications, most of us will simply root for him to hit the books.
Keir GraffCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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