What's good about Russell's latest is that he manages to be respectful of various systems of belief... while still poking gentle fun at them. His narrator has a great voice--hard-boiled, humourous, sardonic--and the cast of characters is both wildly-varied and well-presented. The only downside is that the pace of the story sometimes lags; not enough to spoil the book, but this reader, at least, wishes that a few of the scenes had been pared down somewhat to tighten the flow of the plot.