As a fan of real-world puzzlehunts, this was kind of a difficult read. Our heroes find a long number that looks something like 1122161512… I, puzzle fiend, tried to turn this into letters. But actually there's no way for the reader to decode this number; instead it's [spoiler redacted]. Early in the novel, one protagonist points out that a "clue" message is missing a letter. Then we learn that this fictional New York's "Liberty Statue"'s book has the date MDCCLXXI—it's missing a V. But apparently this has nothing to do with the book's hunt; nobody has ever noticed that the statue has a huge typo, missing letters don't matter in the rest of the book. (Oh, sorry, was that a spoiler? Well, if it's a spoiler that saves you from trying to keep track of letters from other clues like I did, then I have no regrets.)
It's a fine piece of writing, but if you're a puzzle enthusiast you might want to put aside your note-taking equipment and just relax and enjoy the ride.
