If the way William of Baskerville and Adso sift through clues in the scriptorium and the labyrinthine library gripped you, you’ll relish Brother Cadfael unraveling a suspicious death tied to the acquisition of a saint’s relics. Like the poisoned pages and coded signs in The Name of the Rose, Cadfael’s case hinges on quiet observations, abbey politics, and human frailty—and his skeptical, humane outlook recalls William’s levelheaded empiricism.

You enjoyed William’s semiotic reasoning and the dangerous allure of forbidden knowledge—like the Aristotle manuscript Jorge of Burgos tried to suppress. In Foucault’s Pendulum, editors Casaubon, Belbo, and Diotallevi spin a grand conspiracy from arcane manuscripts, only to watch interpretation turn lethal. It’s the same heady mix of riddles, heresy, and intellectual play that made the debates on laughter and truth in the abbey so unforgettable.

If Bernardo Gui’s inquisitorial zeal and the abbey’s trials fascinated you, Silence will pull you into an even starker crucible. Father Rodrigues faces torture, the fumie, and impossible choices as he grapples with God’s silence—echoing Adso’s shaken faith and William’s sober grappling with sin, doubt, and mercy after the abbey’s tragedy.

If you loved William schooling Adso—teaching him to read tracks, question assumptions, and weigh motives—you’ll enjoy watching Sherlock Holmes mentor Mary Russell. Their investigations and wry, respectful banter mirror William and Adso’s dynamic, where each case becomes a lesson not just in clues, but in ethics and perception.

If the papal-imperial tensions and the presence of Bernardo Gui at the abbey’s disputations drew you in, Pears’s Restoration Oxford—rife with competing creeds and political scheming—will hit the same nerve. Multiple narrators contest the truth around Robert Grove’s death, much as testimonies and power dynamics warp justice in the monastery.