Like many Italian authors, Eco shows a joy in experimenting with form and meaning. Ostensibly a murder mystery, this book is really a story about stories, a book about puzzles and truth and conspiracies. Also, our narrator, arrives at an abbey with his master, William of Baskerville, to find that a monk has been killed, seemingly falling from the upper windows of the library. As the newcomers investigate the death, the secrets of the abbey are slowly revealed to them. As more deaths occur, they stand on the edge of a great conspiracy. Or do they? A lyrical, intelligent reinvention of the detective novel.