Reading an Erudite Mystery Novel

I recently recommended The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason to our friends. I'd read that book ages and ages ago and knew it was a mystery, knew I really liked it and passed it on to my brother who liked it too. But I couldn't remember the story.

So despite the fact that I don't read regular books anymore, I decided to read it again. (I did just get new reading glasses.)

There are TONS and TONS of glowing reviews for this book and the words often used to describe it are intellectual, cerebral, brilliant, suspenseful but more often, it's erudite. 

Here is a little synopsis 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..."

 Hmmm... cerebral. Yes, it's definitely that. It's not a book you can skim. The sentences are so eruditely structured that you have to read some twice to get the full appreciation.

And here's part of another book review from Book Browse:

"...Ten years ago, Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason's The Rule of Four became a literary phenomenon that earned comparisons to Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and Donna Tartt's The Secret History. Hailed as "ingenious...profoundly erudite" (The New York Times), "compulsively readable" (People), and "an exceptional piece of scholarship" (San Francisco Chronicle), it spent forty-nine weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, sold nearly two million copies in North America, and was translated into thirty-five languages around the world..."

The thing is, once I started rereading The Rule of Four, I quickly got hooked. 

And you can't read this book really fast. And you can't skip portions because you don't know where there will be a clue.

The authors are Princeton and Harvard graduates. They're obviously brilliant and obviously very erudite which you will immediately surmise once you start reading.

Warner Bros. bought the film rights to it a while ago, but haven't worked on it yet. They must be looking for some erudite screenwriters. 

My aging non-erudite brain is also having trouble remembering so I was flipping back here and there to reread some portions. This was actually easier for me to do on a real book.

I have now borrowed Ian Caldwell's The Fifth Gospel on my Kindle. I may not be erudite, but I can read slowly.

POSTSCRIPT:

I started The Fifth Gospel and think it's easier to read. Maybe. Then I read that Book Browse review again.

"...At once a riveting literary thriller, a feast of biblical history and scholarship, and a moving family drama, The Fifth Gospel is a novel about the depths of sacrifice and the power of forgiveness. Rich, authentic, erudite, 🙄 and emotionally searing, it satisfies on every level..."