Puzzles in Fiction: The Rule of Four

After the success of The Da Vinci Code, more than a few books came out trying to mimic its formula to achieve sales. The Rule of Four seems like one of those, but I found it better written with better characters and a more realistic storyline. Where it let me down was in the area of puzzles. One review called it "the ultimate puzzle book", when really it's just four riddles that for the most part cannot be solved by the reader. Quite the opposite of what I look for when looking for puzzles in fiction.

The book deals with Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and some obsessive people who try and find its secret. The ancient text actually does have a real secret: The first letter of each chapter forms an acrostic. The riddles in the book deal with finding the other, fictional hidden messages in the text.

I read this after finishing work on BANG 22 and it wasn't so much the relatively impossible riddles that interested me, as the main character's decent into obsession with solving the book and how it took away from his personal relationships and "real life". It seemed to parallel some of my own experiences, although to quite a lesser degree (I remember to eat and bathe, for example). But the feeling was there and it served as a warning to remember the more important things in my life.