The Rule of Four

Two students, Tom and Paul, are a hair's breadth from solving the mysteries of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili - a renowned text attributed to an Italian nobleman. For Tom, the research has a link to his family's past - and an obstacle to the woman he loves. For Paul, it has become an obsession, a reason for living. But as their deadline looms, research has stalled. 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 beginnning to see the text not simply as a story of faith, eroticism and pedantry, but as a bizarre, coded mathematical maze. As they come 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.