Buddies pen their own mystery about codes

By Deirdre Donahue
USA Today

Look out, Dan Brown, author of the international sensation "The Da Vinci Code." The authors of the new "The Rule of Four" (Dial, $24) also have deciphered the secrets of writing a best seller based on a code.

But the much-talked-about "The Rule of Four," written by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, still has a way to go to catch "Code."

There are 7.65 million copies of "The Da Vinci Code" in print in North America, Doubleday says. The book has been on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list for 63 weeks; 13 times at No. 1, where it now sits. It made its debut on the list at No. 4 after its first week on sale in March 2003.

But "The Rule of Four," No. 6 on the list, is a contender.

Released May 11, it opened on the list at No. 20. A staggering 600,000 copies are in print. The first printing was 85,000. "The Da Vinci Code's" first printing was 260,000.

Caldwell and Thomason, 28-year-old Ivy League super-achievers, drew upon an authentic 1499 Renaissance text to create a thriller about two Princeton undergraduates who try to unravel the mysteries in an ancient book titled "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili."

But don't dare call it a "Da Vinci Code" copycat. The novel represents almost six years of work by Caldwell and Thomason, who grew up across the street from each other in Northern Virginia.

Their editor, Dial Press editorial director Susan Kamil, read an early version in 2001, long before "Da Vinci" came out in 2003. At that point, Kamil says, "Rule of Four" was a little "undercooked," but it had the elements of a page-turner. The duo began revising and showed her a new version in June 2002.

The two didn't plan their writing careers. Thomason attended Harvard, where he majored in anthropology. He also earned a medical degree and an MBA from Columbia. Caldwell attended Princeton, where he majored in history and graduated Phi Beta Kappa.

After graduation in 1998, the duo hunkered down in Caldwell's parents' basement, hoping to crank out a thriller in three months. But it wasn't that easy, and the authors relied on their friendship to get them through the revisions. "When we would get discouraged, having a partner made us realize we were going to see it through," Thomason says.

After the book's release in May, reviewers noted that readers who liked Brown's book would relish "Rule of Four." Publishers Weekly said it was similar to "Da Vinci" but better, incorporating elements of author Donna Tartt's 1992 drama, "The Secret History," and Umberto Eco's 1983 medieval whodunit, "The Name of the Rose."

"The public is displaying a real appetite for mysteries about codes," says mystery expert Otto Penzler, editor of the annual "Best American Mystery Stories." Aware that "Rule" was completed before "Da Vinci" was published, Penzler notes that "sometimes an idea, an interest, is in the air."

Two weeks ago in Princeton, the authors were allowed to touch the "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili," the Venetian text at the center of "The Rule of Four." In 1999, it was translated into English.

Believed to have been created by Francesco Colonna, it was written in Latin, Italian, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldean and Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Now, Caldwell and Thomason are working on another thriller that moves between the past and the present. But, Caldwell says, "perhaps with an easier ancient text to pronounce."