Title: Better than expected... and better than The DaVinci Code
Product review: I'll confess to having paged through the reader reviews at Amazon before reading The Rule of Four. I'm glad the middling ratings I found here didn't dissuade me from reading Caldwell and Thomason's first effort -- it's a much more readable example of this sub-genre (does anyone have a name for this sort of book yet?) than any of Dan Brown's efforts.The book has a broader "art-historical" appeal than The DaVinci Code, while featuring more sophisticated character development. I've read three of Brown's novels, and while I enjoyed all three, I walked away from each left with a vague impression of "a guy, a woman, and an older guy." Such wasn't the case with The Rule of Four, and I found myself as engaged by the friendship between the central five characters as I was by the mystery of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.
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