What’s a Princeton senior to do? Should he follow his father’s dream, hang with with buddies, or get serious with his girlfriend? Tom Sullivan may or may not give a timely or satisfactory answer to that question, but there’s no doubt that The Rule of Four is adroit at framing it. Caldwell and Thomason paint a convincing picture of a young man faced with impending adulthood—represented here by Tom’s upcoming graduation—and torn in heart and mind by the choices it forces into his life.

On the one hand, there’s his father’s legacy. Tom’s deceased father was an academic who let his unfinished study of an obscure Renaissance monograph, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, dominate his professional and personal life. Tom’s classmate and roommate Paul Harris is also a student of the text, and he’s no less entranced by it than Paul’s father had been. Tom finds himself assisting Paul’s work on the text, and his father’s ghost is everpresent as Tom has to question the place in his life of the text and his father’s legacy. The authors do a great job of unrolling the puzzles posed in and by Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. In less deft hands, the scholarship might seem far less beguiling.

Then there’s the question of his buddies and college, with all its late-childhood traditions, distractions, and rites of passage. Caldwell and Thomason, the former a Princeton alumnus, paint an alluring picture of Princeton: sophmoric pranks, naked revelry, a tricky social scene, and the wonderful campus itself. In the hands of these authors, college is both a springboard to adulthood and a siren calling its students to remain forever in childhood. Tom’s dilemma is to figure out which it is for him.

Finally, there’s Katie, Tom’s girlfriend. She is kind but insistent on the ground rules: a real relationship means that he has to get his priorities in order and under control. She sees him obsess over Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and lets him know that he cannot carry on both relationships. It’s the book or her.

The authors wrap all these questions in a brisk narrative filled with dueling academics, mounting danger, and adults unwilling to let children make unforced choices about their futures. The story’s climax is a bit over the top, with fires, injuries, and murders that don’t quite seem to fit. There is also a somewhat muddied use of the rebirth motif inherent in “Renaissance” themes and a pivotal Easter weekend. Nonetheless, the plot elements are only exaggerations; it might be hard to suspend disbelief but they don’t impede the story at all.

In the end, Tom makes his choices. As in real life, however, the choices come slowly. There are no great epiphanies, only a mind and heart that need time to understand the questions posed by adulthood, and even more time to choose an answer.