Willis has several distinct writing styles: subdued and exquisite, evident in Lincoln's Dreams and Remake; deeply tragic, as with Doomsday Book or that ghastly story about the boarding school; and then there is her high humor. This is the Connie Willis I read and reread: Bellwether, To Say Nothing of the Dog, and Even the Queen. These are the books and stories I include in my class reading lists, because I like to hear my students laugh. Inside Job belongs to this latter category of humorous story-telling that is character-based with a touch of the ridiculous.

The story is narrated in the first voice by Rob, who publishes The Jaundiced Eye, a small press paper that debunks fake psychics of all flavors. He is ably assisted by a gorgeous actress named Kildy Ross, who is able to use her La La Land connections to get info and invitations to the posh, high-yield scams. Rob keeps waiting for her to give up on expose work, abandon him, and go back to acting; but whenever he asks her why she doesn't, she points out that her Hollywood options would be to star in Hulk III or to pose outside of rehab centers. Kildy would rather shell out $4000 to help expose a channeler called Ariaura who gives a voice to the 'ascended entity' Isus.

In Bellwether, Connie Willis provided a PhD's worth of data about fads through history; in Inside Job, she names real names of people in the psychic trade, both the con artists and the debunkers. Her main characters are fictional, but the context is genuine. Her explanations of the uses of sex and snob appeal to bamboozle gulls is Connie Willis at her best – she is dead-on in her descriptions and critiques of merchandising and the gobbledygook spouted by self-styled channelers.

The SF component of the story is that Ariaura seems to also be channeling the voice of H. L. Mencken, the original debunker himself, the reporter who covered the Scopes Monkey Trial in the nineteen twenties. He interrupts her ungrammatical maunderings with diatribes and insults directed at the audience. Kildy is convinced that it is indeed the spirit of Mencken interrupting Ariaura's sweetness and light shows and blowing away her smoke; Rob thinks that's impossible and Ariaura is being clever to generate notoriety. To determine the truth, they compare the outbreaks to Mencken's published writings and devise questions that only Mencken could possibly answer. Their confrontations with both Ariaura and the Mencken persona become increasingly intense, building to a climactic public showdown and a satisfying denouement.

No matter where you live on the skeptical-gullible-enlightened spectrum, this is a fun and informative book.

Truth isn’t something you believe; it’s something you recognize. – Chris Paige