Here’s something that was a surprise for me, perhaps it will surprise you too: “People of the Book“, a 2008 novel by Geraldine Brooks, teasing out (imagined) story after story from the margins, stains and marks left on “the Sarajevo Haggadah, one of the oldest surviving Jewish illuminated texts” (thus spake Wikipedia). One Amazon customer reviewer called it “CSI for librarians“, but I’m not sure how best to file that kind of compliment: still, better that than “magisterial”, eh?
Oddly, though this is Brooks’ first novel since she won a Pulitzer Prize, there are plenty of cheap copies on bookfinder.com / Amazon Marketplace (etc), so shop around. Even though it’s not strictly a cipher novel per se, I’ve ordered my copy & will review it along the way…