A college professor takes on a criminal hacking ring that’s targeting undergrads in Price’s debut campus thriller.

Saul Sokolsky—Solly to his friends—earned a doctorate in physics at Caltech, but in truth, he’s more of a generalist. After Solly has worked at tech startups for a few years, the death of his sister leads him to reevaluate his life’s trajectory and return to school for an English degree. Now, at age 38, he has a permanent (but not tenured) job teaching rhetoric and literature at Caltech, where he’ll also serve as a resident adviser for Blacker House—which means he’ll live in a dorm while mentoring students in the non-academic aspects of university life. Solly has been instructed not to get romantically involved with any of his students (a fair warning, given he dated an undergraduate while he was a graduate student in his 30s). He’s also been warned to keep an eye out for any unsavory characters hanging around campus attempting to hire undergrad tech whizzes to hack into computer systems (a skill that many Caltech students possess). Solly becomes infatuated—not with an undergrad, thankfully, but with a gorgeous, blond, 29-year-old Polish postdoc named Ewa “Mia” Kulpa, who, for some reason, is extremely charmed by Solly. He also takes a platonic interest in a Blacker House student named Darryl Lagerstrom, a peculiar but highly intelligent boy who’s quietly grappling with the suicide of his older brother. It turns out Darryl’s former computing partner, Fang Lou, recently dropped out of school to work with a mob-affiliated hacking outfit run by a mysterious (and very dangerous) European named Sashi. What’s more, the FBI—interested in Fang because of her father’s status as a well-connected Chinese billionaire—is desperate to find her before something bad happens. Will Solly’s habit of bending the rules help avert an escalating crisis? Or is he about to learn the hard way that even the best intentions sometimes lead to dire consequences?

Price’s witty and rapid-fire prose is loaded with quips, philosophical musings, and paeans to his alma mater, Caltech: “Wednesday, the lame-duck day, started way before I was ready for it. Mia called at 6:30 a.m. (Is there a Polish word for sleep?) She said that we should have breakfast together. She clarified: off campus…I told her I’d call, then pick her up on Wilson, right off California, as soon as I could get away.” The author is perhaps overly fond of nicknames—Mia Kulpa is truly groan-inducing—and there’s a general dad-joke tone to the novel that some readers may find off-putting. This is a shame, since Solly’s jaunty, rambling narration, far more than the book’s convoluted crime plot, is the primary source of the novel’s pleasure. Despite the multitude of deaths, the emotional stakes of the book never feel very high—indeed, in the case of one death, the stakes should probably feel much higher. Still, those looking for a breezy campus novel will find much here to enjoy.

A jokey, messy novel about a college instructor who’s in over his head.