Intumescências de um bibliófilo

Young scholars can have romantic souls, too. The story told by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason in THE RULE OF FOUR (Dial, $24) opens in 1497, when two messengers from the Vatican are butchered on the road and the information they carry about a book called the ''Hypnerotomachia Poliphili'' is lost in time. It's a marvelous book with a dark Renaissance secret in its coded heart, and the Princeton senior who picks up the narrative in 1999 is properly transfixed by its mystery, which he and his brainy roommate are determined to unravel. Profoundly erudite -- and far less windy than ''The Da Vinci Code'' -- this is the ultimate puzzle-book for anyone who dares to solve a geometric problem like ''How many arms from your feet to the horizon?'' by consulting Curious George.
in The New York Times