This is one of those awkward novels that attempts to throw supernatural events in with a detective-mystery-thriller story, a trick that rarely goes as gracefully as the authors hope/think/expect--the fact the genres are appear to overlap as much as they do makes it seem more natural than it is, I think. In this case the first-person narration could help, since their belief system changing is kinda the crux of the novel; but neither the supernatural layer nor the narrator's changing beliefs really worked all that well for me. The writing is pretty decent, and most of the characters come across pretty clearly; but the pacing gets a bit jammed-up toward the end, especially as it becomes clear that the narrator-detective is going to have to get religion to survive. The novel is copyright 2014 and some of the goings-on in it are very of its time; while the narrative could reflect many possible authorial attitudes, there's an afterword that makes Kerr's position clear. Not a terrible novel, but not all that good, either.
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