The Name of the Rose

⚖The case for it

A medieval monastery, a series of murders, a Sherlock Holmes-like friar named William of Baskerville. Eco's postmodern puzzle works simultaneously as whodunit, philosophical treatise on semiotics, and meditation on heresy. Sold 50 million copies worldwide, and for good reason: no crime novel since has been this intellectually ambitious or this genuinely pleasurable.

— the canon

✕The case against

Eco said the first hundred pages were a deliberate penance, and he meant it: untranslated Latin, monastic politics, a door described for pages. The detection keeps stopping for seminars on heresy and semiotics, and most characters are positions wearing habits. Readers who finish tend to love it. Plenty put it down at the portal.

— the honest librarian