When the blurbs lie: The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason

June 22, 12:21 PMNorfolk Books ExaminerLydia Netzer

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Dear Princeton: We heart you! Love, the Authors.

"Better than The Da Vinci Code" it said. "The Da Vinci Code for people with brains" it said. "A cut above The Da Vinci Code" it said. It actually said, "If Scott Fitzgerald, Umberto Eco, and Dan Brown teamed up to write a novel, the result would be The Rule of Four."

Wow. That kind of talk adjacent to the byline "New York Times" or "Publisher's Weekly" on the jacket of a book can save it from the thrift pile and elevate it straight to the top of the "to be read" pile. Who doesn't love a good literary thriller with a puzzle to solve, a race across Europe, and maybe some obscure facet of Renaissance culture to explore?

The Rule of Four is about the study of a book, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a real book published in 1499. The book is famous for hypnotizing its readers, drawing them into the study of its history, its weird logic and language, its puzzling elements. Sounds very promising! A guy like Dan Brown could use that kind of hook to drag us from historical sites in Italy to timeless monuments in Paris, killing lots of people along the way.

So how does it really stack up against The Da Vinci Code, the book that all the blurbs are telling me is but a pale, wispy shadow beside The Rule of Four's impressive brilliance?

• The DaVinci Code starts out with a corpse posed like DaVinci's Vitruvian Man and decorated with a bloody pentagram.
• The Rule of Four's first corpse appears on page 163 when a graduate student falls out a window.

• The DaVinci Code's main characters are hunted by a homocidal albino monk.
• The Rule of Four's main characters are policed by campus cops with flashlights!

• The DaVinci Code involves the Priory of Sion, the catholic Opus Dei, and the Knights Templar.
• The Rule of Four follows some fusty, bossy, anxious academics.

• The DaVinci Code characters search for the Holy Grail by following clues embedded in famous art across Europe.
• The Rule of Four characters try to figure out the meaning of a book by reading other books in their dorm room.

The entire novel takes place on the campus of Princeton. Instead of learning about art, history, and the secrets of the church, we learn the eating habits, the recreational habits, the study habits, the a capella choir habits of students at Princeton. I almost expected a note stuffed into the margins: Dear Princeton, We love you! Do you love us? Check ___ yes or ___ no. Love, Caldwell and Thomason. After waiting 160 pages for the first corpse, we then watch the characters get into a Saab and listen to Sinatra. And then, after having teased us with the suggestion of an actual villain, the hint of a bona fide conflict, the book takes a long detour into the past to bring us up to date on the minutae of scholarship surrounding the Hypneratomachia Poliphili, the book that means...

Let's talk about the book's dark secret. The secret that the jacket tells me men have *died* to suppress. I can tell you the secret without giving away the one scene in the novel with any originality or merit, so here it is: The Renaissance was good. Yes, it was *good*. The paintings, the books, the sculpture, and particularly the ideas: good. Whoever wanted to stop it from happening, for whatever reason, if such a person existed, was bad and wrong. Take a moment to recover from your outrage.

• Secret in The Da Vinci Code: The church lied! Jesus was married and had a kid!
• Secret in The Rule of Four: The church tried to burn the Renaissance up in a fire!
   
  Question in The Da Vinci Code: Will the church kill the last descendent of Christ?
  Question in The Rule of Four: Will Paul finish his thesis on time?

I do not see how The Rule of Four became such a runaway hit, that had reviewers drooling out praise like, "The real treat here is the process of discovery!" (Thank you, New York Times). There was no process, and no discovery. The entire story takes place in a weekend at Princeton, the most dramatic violence is inflicted by a faulty steam pipe, and the book reads more like a nostalgic love letter to the University than a thriller. I had to finish it, so I could write this, but you certainly don't have to. Find something else to do with your life. I hear Dan Brown has a new one coming out.

So what do you think? Are there blurb writers that you trust? Do you take the Boston Globe seriously when it recommends a novel? What about the New York Times? Or do you think that all blurbs are just fluff and nonsense?