The Rule Of Four (2004)

We meet Princeton senior Paul Harris the night before his thesis is due, an evening that generally involves nothing more dramatic than spell-check. But Paul's work sleuthing out hidden messages in the knotty, real-life Renaissance text Hypnerotomachia Poliphili draws his friends and mentors into murderous intrigue -- although, chief among the book's numerous faults, we don't learn why that should be until just before the climax. We are, however, treated to pedantic lectures on cryptography and 15th-century Florence, snatches of philosophy (''Time is the guy at the amusement park who paints shirts with an airbrush''), and a view of undergraduate life seemingly lifted from a boys' adventure story. Is it any wonder a novel that views literary interpretation as fancy codework should be strictly by the numbers?