Prestige — Stephen Brown

After having previously reached the heights of his profession, Professor Edward String, an expert on the Great Molasses Flood of 1919, among other topics, finds himself out of work and desperate after a fall from grace. Hoping to keep a low profile while keeping his head on straight, the answer to Ed's prayers has seemed to come in the form of a teaching position at the low-pressure Tinsbury University, a public university down on its luck and headed by a new school president, Bill Hogan, who is anxious to make an impression on both the public and his superiors. However, it doesn't take long for Professor String to discover that things at Tinsbury are not nearly as harmonious and tranquil as they first seemed and that it was not luck that brought him to Tinsbury, but rather the machinations of President Hogan, who has found himself in need of a professor with just the sort of special skills possessed by Edward String.