Michael Gruber's genre mashing thrillers are unlike anything else you will read, encompassing as they do elements of thriller, mystery, literary fiction in the form of genuinely interesting philosophical musings and recurring themes exploring the nature of the universe and reality with examinations of materialism, mysticism, ontology and cosmology.Jimmy Paz and Michael Gruber explore Christian mysticism and demonology in this second outing with Jimmy Paz. A Sudanese oil bureaucrat is dead under mysterious circumstances and the woman found at the scene, Emmylou Dideroff, claims to be in contact with Saint Catherine and the devil, not to mention God and they are all in competition, not only for her soul and sanity but for the survival of an obscure Sudanese tribe. Jimmy becomes involved when he catches the murder case, but he is involved in a more fatalistic level as he himself struggles with questions of spirituality and materialism. Indeed, one of the main reasons to read Gruber, besides his incredibly intelligent plots and lovable characters is to read about the nature of life and the cosmos from both points of view. Anyone who has struggled and continues to struggle with these questions will find a home in Gruber, along with a page-turning read. Along the way the reader also gets an education in Evangelism, Catholic theology and religious life, psychometric testing, the state of mental and medical help for the less fortunate and the mysteries of human personality.If these things sound like they couldn't possibly fit together, that is the fun of reading a Gruber novel. He makes them fit together and while he does he muses on the nature of consciousness and reality and teaches the reader something about an academic subject be it anthropology, entomology, Catholic theology or art history, to name a few topics from his many thrillers. Gruber is always, always an intelligent and entertaining delight who is a curious seeker and any reader who is the same will find his books a non-guilty pleasure.Truly, more than a master of the genre, Gruber's works have elements of the literary and character study as well, wrapped up in an appealing, page-turning package. I have been pre-ordering his books for his last three publications after discovering him with the Jimmy Paz trilogy. I highly recommend that lovers of a good read that has brains and brio start with the Paz Trilogy and move on to all of his other works. A delightful find.