If a "puzzle" mystery is going to give us a thousand red herrings in a terrible tangle, it can't also withhold key information - either withhold it or hide it in a thicket of false starts.  You can't do both.  The many ping-ponging reversals of fortune among the main characters make none of them, even a supposed mastermind, feel like they really have anything they're pursuing or standing for, whether internal or external.  People just do things because that's when the plot needs it to happen.  I guess that makes it sound worse than it is.  It is ingenious, and the many levels of meta-textuality work surprisingly well together, something oft-attempted but rarely pulled off.  But it wasn't enough.