The Name of the Rose

Before The Da Vinci Code, there was The Name of the Rose, a secret-knowledge thriller set in medieval times that is superior in nearly every way to Dan Brown’s. The story follows a Franciscan friar (William) and his novice (Adso) who investigate a series of mysterious deaths at a monastery. The novel is dense with obscure texts and historical references, and William is an expert at deciphering signs and signals from arcane sources: “The world speaks to us like a great book… and it speaks not only of the ultimate things (which it does always in an obscure fashion) but also of closer things, and then it speaks quite clearly.” This is one of the better books in what has more recently become a crowded genre.