Cheater (review)

"Karl Petrofsky has spent most of his eleven years in school trying to hide the 100s and A+s scrawled across the top of his tests." Unfortunately, his efforts have failed, and he's firmly ensconced in the "class nerd" position, along with his clutch of geeky friends. After he chances to see Blake, the class god, cheating on a test, he's stunned to be invited into Blake's inner circle, where he finds out that there is a Confederacy, an organized group of students who arrange to cheat on tests via high-tech methods. Enticed by their arguments and the pleasures of belonging (and the pleasures of closeness to sexy Cara), Karl agrees to join their group, but little does he realize that he's put himself in the middle of more high-pressure factions than he even knew existed. There's plenty of cunning and craftsmanship here: the cheating itself is cleverly engineered (there's overt contrast, in fact, with a sad-sack analog cheater who gets caught early on), the characterizations (ranging from the enigmatic Cara to smooth but not insincere Blake to Karl's straight-arrow friend Lizette) are intriguingly complex, and the web of strings being pulled behind the scenes is mysteriously suggested and satisfyingly revealed. The ethics of Karl's participation are discussed from both sides, and the Confederacy's claims that 1) everyone does it and 2) the system is inherently unfair anyway will prompt plenty of discussion.