For Two Young Authors, a Happy Beginning

Friends' First Novel Has Become a Bestseller

Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason grew up in Northern Virginia believing that books can change lives. With that in mind, they wrote a novel, "The Rule of Four," a mystery in which lives revolve around -- and are lost because of -- an ancient book. The novel is a smash. This weekend it moves to No. 5 on The Washington Post's fiction list. And yesterday it was the top seller at Amazon.com.

Turns out, the lifelong friends are onto something. Books can change lives. Theirs will be forever altered by the success of their first novel.

They got a taste of the new life Wednesday when they came home for a reading at Borders Books & Music at Baileys Crossroads. As the store filled with more than 200 people -- many old friends and teachers and family members -- the co-authors drank ice water in the cafe and talked about their long, strange trip to overnight literary stardom.

To keep them straight: Caldwell -- taller, glasses, light shirt -- grew up in Annandale, went to Princeton, lives in Newport News and has a fiancee. Thomason -- smaller, glasses-less, dark shirt -- grew up in Falls Church, went to Harvard, lives in New York and has a girlfriend.

They are both 28 years old, bright, soft-spoken, mannerly, complimentary of each other and somewhat shell-shocked by fame.

They met at Belvedere Elementary School in Falls Church circa 1984 and discovered they had a lot in common. They lived across Columbia Pike from each other. Caldwell was not allowed to cross the street by himself; Thomason was. They played together in Caldwell's room, which was in the basement. "We became fast friends," Caldwell said.

They played soccer on the same team, coached by Caldwell's father, Ray, and they co-wrote a play, "The Klutzy Kidnappers," in Marie Baglio's third-grade class. They went on to be classmates at Glasgow Intermediate School and Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Through the years they co-wrote other things, including song parodies and a speech Thomason delivered at their high school graduation.

"It was terrible," Caldwell said.

"We're interested in similar things in different ways," he said.

Thomason added, "We were never competitive."

They stayed in touch while in college. In the middle of their senior years they decided to write a novel together. "We didn't know what we were doing," Caldwell said.

The summer after graduation, they set up computers, side by side, in Caldwell's basement and began writing "The Rule of Four."

In the novel, a quartet of friends at Princeton sets out to break the code of the "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili" (pronounced Hip-ner-AH-toe-MAHK-ee-a Poh-LIH-fill-lee), a wide-ranging and esoteric tome about love, architecture and a whole bunch of weird stuff, written in seven languages and published in 1499. They hope to discover an ancient treasure. Along the way there is murder and surprise.

Thomason and Caldwell thought they could finish the novel in three months. When fall rolled around, Caldwell took a job at McLean-based MicroStrategy, and Thomason went to medical school in New York. They also kept working on their book.