Booklog
So this was actually written by a college classmate of mine (though I don't know him) and set at the college we both attended, which is why I picked it up. Basically what you've got here is, I assume, The Da Vinci Code except not; I mean, I haven't actually read The Da Vinci Code, but it's all Renaissance manuscripts and codebreaking and whatnot, with fewer conspiracies and more people trying to steal each other's academic work to get tenure.
I was kind of bored by the beginning; once they got into the codebreaking bit in the middle, plus all the running around and professors shooting each other and so on, it picked up quite a bit. And then they burned down Ivy! ...which only oyceter will know to be amused by, but which cracked me up. Sadly, a lot of the specifics about the setting were either made up or, uh, odd (it doesn't snow there that time of year, and what was with all the driving around, and...) so I didn't get a particularly good nostalgia hit off of it. Oh well.
Anyhoo, I wouldn't particularly recommend it, but it was a fun enough read once I got into it. And the love interest escaped from the narrator! Of course, the very end indicates that that might change, but I'm going to continue to believe that Katie (yes, really) got the phone call, thought to herself, huh, I remember him, he was kind of an ass, which is why I broke up with him in the first place, and then went off to live her fantastic New York gallery life. Because I totally failed to get what she saw in him. Oh, narrator: She doesn't actually exist just to be a signifier in your psychodrama. Quit it.