The Rule Of Four
The Rule of Four is a novel written by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, and published in 2004. Caldwell is a Princeton University graduate, and Thomason is a Harvard University graduate. They are childhood friends who wrote the book after their respective graduations. Both Caldwell and Thomason attended Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia.
The Rule of Four reached the top of the New York Times Bestseller list. The book was a no. 1 national and international bestseller and has been translated into more than 25 languages. It has sold more than four million copies worldwide, and to date is the best selling debut novel of the decade.
The book is set on the Princeton campus during the weekend of Good Friday, 1999. The story involves four Princeton seniors, friends and roommates, getting ready for graduation: Tom, Paul, Charlie and Gil. Two of the students, Tom Sullivan and Paul Harris, are trying to solve the mystery contained within an extremely rare, beautifully decorated and very mysterious (and this is a real and exist) book— the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.
Tom is the son of a professor who had dedicated his life for the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Throughout the novel, he struggles between being fascinated by the book and trying to pull away from the obsession that drew a rift between his father and his mother and is now causing discord between him and his girlfriend, Katie.
His roommate, Paul Harris, is a brilliant young scholar who is writing his undergraduate thesis on the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. He has spent all four of his undergraduate years studying the book and is close to a breakthrough.
Charlie, the roommate who acts as the parent of the four friends and Gil, heir to a wealthy East-Coast banking family are supporting characters to Tom and Paul’s project.
The novel charts the relationship between the four roommates and how obsession can be both a boon and a burden. It is a story about growing up as much as solving the mystery of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. The disciplines of Renaissance science, history, architecture, and art are drawn upon to solve the mystery.
Tom and Paul are a hair’s breadth from solving the mysteries of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili—a renowned text attributed to an Italian nobleman, a work that has baffled scholars since its publication in 1499. For Tom, their research has been a link to his family’s past — and an obstacle to the woman he loves. For Paul, it has become an obsession, the very reason for living. But as their deadline looms, research has stalled — until a long-lost diary surfaces with a vital clue. And when a fellow researcher is murdered just hours later, Tom and Paul realize that they are not the first to glimpse the Hypnerotomachia’s secrets.
Suddenly the stakes are raised, and as the two friends sift through the codes and riddles at the heart of the text, they are beginning to see the manuscript in a new light—not simply as a story of faith, eroticism and pedantry, but as a bizarre, coded mathematical maze. And as they come closer and closer to deciphering the final puzzle of a book that has shattered careers, friendships and families, they know that their own lives are in mortal danger. Because at least one person has been killed for knowing too much. And they know even more.
From the streets of fifteenth-century Rome to the rarified realm of the Ivy League, from a shocking 500 year-old murder scene to the drama of a young man’s coming of age, The Rule Of Four takes us on an entertaining, illuminating tour of history—as it builds to a pinnacle of nearly unbearable suspense.
And, when i started to read this book, i think i didn’t wanted to stop. so, when i finally could stopped, i didn’t wanted to start it again until i know that it is the time to really finihing the book. and i think this book is the one that makes me thinks too much… 
but for some reason, I really like and enjoy the book.
