Good Morning America, Sure,
But Where's Their ABC News Special Report?

Paul Colford introduces Daily News readers to Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, authors of The Rule of Four, which I covered earlier when it was reviewed by Maslin. Colford gets right to the point, "Is it the novel that'll satisfy many who loved Dan Brown's mega-selling The Da Vinci Code?" He thinks early signs look promising for this "high-tone suspense novel centered on a mysterious Renaissance manuscript, which really does exist."

Having eagerly devoured the book over the course of a weekend, I'm pretty confident that Dan Brown is the wrong reference point, because these guys do a much more elegant job of building up a shadow history around a tiny cluster of data points. I know I've said before that Dan Brown is just doing Umberto Eco badly, but Caldwell and Thomason are doing Arturo Perez-Reverte quite well, although the world-weariness doesn't rest as easily on the shoulders of their college-age narrator as it does on some of his antiheroes, making him seem a bit old before his time. Trust me, though, that's not much of a distraction once the codes start tumbling out of the Hypnotermachia and the bodies start tumbling out of their hiding places. And though there is a huge history-shattering secret at the heart of it all, the modern-day murders are ultimately rooted in much more plausible motives than the preservation of an ancient conspiracy, adding to the tale's overall credibility.