Medieval/early-renaissance (/"early modern"?)-set Sherlock Holmes mystery, or maybe an anti-mystery. I found Name of the Rose to be a surprisingly easy read; I probably benefitted from being a little bit familiar with the time period, though I probably should have read Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror" first. Most of the Latin that pops up in Name of the Rose consists of sayings & formulae, so it's either still familiar to modern readers, or at least easy to look up. That said the more you know about medieval history & literature, or about Medieval Latin, the more you'll probably get out of this book, so if you're a medieval manuscript expert who likes mysteries, this is the codex for you. The introduction by David Lodge is worth reading. According to the intro, Eco has said that Name of the Rose is not meant to be analogous to modern Italy, but I do wonder how the references to Italy being "the land of intrigue" are supposed to be read. I liked also how Eco said he set the book in the time period he did because he didn't believe Sherlock Holmes could have existed before Roger Bacon. I became interested in Name of the Rose because of a line from the movie adaptation sampled at the beginning of a promo for KDVS's 1000 Points of Fright (or was it Raise the Dead?) metal show. The line doesn't pop up in the book, but the part it must be in is still pretty good.