Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

An amusing use of pedantry mocks the world of academia in this novel about a peripatetic college professor and his daughter. I enjoyed it at first, and just as I was getting sick of it, the plot took over and pulled me along as I tried to understand the adolescents in an exclusive high school and the teacher who befriended them. The story builds in suspense as it reaches the deaths of a couple of characters and the uncovering of a bizarre political conspiracy. A really good novel.