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.

This book has been sitting on my shelf for a long time...I'm not sure where I found it?! I read it a number of years ago and enjoyed the story. I'll be releasing it again shortly

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Very pleased to see this was available. I'd enjoyed listening to an audio version, but - grr! argh! - it was abridged, and choppy enough that I really wanted to get the full version. Thanks for sharing it, NotPhilRaitt.

When we first meet the main character, Tom, he's lying on a couch in his dorm room, looking at "a pair of letters...each containing a vision of what I could be doing next year." Throughout the rest of the book, he keeps being torn between choices, and the stakes stay high.

There's a lot going on in this book, and even after re-reading it I'm sure I missed a lot. The underground steam tunnels play a big role, offering secrecy and hidden passage around the campus, but they hold danger too. In fact, darkness and the underground are an almost constant presence. The most driven student, Paul, has a carrel in a library subbasement at the end of a long dark corridor, and he improves it by taping black construction paper over the window. It took a while to notice, since there are flashbacks and lots of scholarly digressions, but the action of the book is actually contained between Good Friday and Easter - certainly another reference to being in the dark and underground!

There's plenty of suspense, and a boatload of historical information. I'm abashed to admit this this is how I finally found out the origin of the phrase "bonfire of the vanities." Meanwhile, the writing kept surprising me with how good it was. There are lovely figures of speech and metaphors, little flashes of humor (a reference to the head librarian, "where the book stops"), and vivid scenes that will stay in your head a long time.

But that's just one person's opinion. Future readers, what do YOU think?

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