Tom Sullivan is about to graduate from Princeton. Hes intelligent and popular but haunted by the violent death several years earlier of his father an academic who devoted his life to studying one of the rarest most complex and most valuable books in the world. Since its publication in 1499 the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili has baffled scholars who have tried to understand its many mysteries. Coded in seven languages the text is at once a passionate love story an intricate mathematical labyrinth and a tale of arcane brutality. Paul Harris Toms roommate has deeply personal reasons of his own for wanting to unveil the secrets the book hides. When a long-lost diary surfaces it seems the two friends have found the key to the labyrinth - but when a fellow researcher is murdered only hours later they suddenly find themselves in great danger. And what they discover embedded in the text stuns them: a narrative detailing the passion of a Renaissance prince a hidden crypt and a secret worth dying to protect.
