written in rhyme, the book includes large and lavish full-page illustrations of horace's opulent house and the events of the party, packed with hidden details. the author invites the reader to deduce the identity of the thief by examining the illustrations and making deductions and observations. also among the details in the illustrations are hidden messages, ciphers, and codes for amateur cryptographers (for example, one page's border consists of morse code while another page set in the ballroom contains musical clues as to which guest is guilty). the biggest and most noticeable clue lies in a paragraph of ciphertext at the end of the book, which is to be decrypted, once the reader has discovered the identity of the thief, by means of a caesar cipher mapping a to the first letter of the guilty animal's name. the solution to the cipher confirms the answer to the puzzle and offers an additional challenge to the reader.