Luke Stevenson dies in a car accident on his birthday, rushing to a dinner party he doesn’t want to attend, filled with people he doesn’t really like, and thrown by his wife, Alice, whom he doesn’t really love. In fairness, unfaithful Alice doesn’t really love him, either. For a while, things seem better for Luke in the afterlife. Then they get much, much worse.

Stopgap, the sharp second novel from Toronto writer Liam Card, focuses on Luke as he narrates an abbreviated version of his life, and a more detailed account of his afterlife. Following his death, Luke is given a choice: he can proceed to What’s Next, or remain on Earth as a ghost for the remainder of his allotted lifetime (the accident having robbed him of more than five decades of earthly existence). Luke decides to return to Earth, with two goals: find out who Alice has been sleeping with, and track down his first love.

He doesn’t bargain on his other assignment: acting as mentor to the spirit of Safia Jaffi, a young Pakistani girl who was one of 36 innocents killed by a suicide bomber. Unlike Luke, Safia is enraged, not just at her own demise but at violent death in general. In her fury, she sets out, with Luke as her somewhat skeptical sidekick, on a righteous campaign smiting killers just before they kill, thereby instilling in the living a fear that begins to change the world, ostensibly for the better.

But that’s not enough for Safia, and when her mandate broadens to include those who have ever committed – or even thought of committing – any act of violence whatsoever, Luke tries stop her. It doesn’t go well.

Stopgap finds the balance between thoughtful and anarchic, entertaining and thought-provoking, largely through Card’s skilled use of Luke’s narrative voice, which lends a dry, matter-of-fact tone to even the most staggering of marvels, while still serving as a conduit for significant moral questions. In a sense, Luke’s voice saves the book from itself, giving perspective and  humanity to subjects that could otherwise have been forbiddingly dark and emotionally devastating. Instead, Stopgap is a small treasure, a morally complex, boldly imaginative, tightly drawn romp.