The premise of Holy F*uck, as befitting its provocative title, is compelling. A miracle worker walks among us, and she just happens to be a comely prostitute who’s not put off by deformity or disease and who doesn’t charge the afflicted extra for a roll in the hay. She’s an equal-opportunity lady of the evening (or midafternoon or late morning).

And speaking of the deformed or diseased, they get something even better than Stella’s going rate: They get healed.

News of the malady-curing hooker travels fast and soon reaches the Vatican, which is desperate for any whiff of sainthood to boost the Catholic Church’s declining relevance and attendance. Of course, the Holy See is a bit conflicted about the possibility of a sex worker becoming a saint; apparently, the Bible frowns on prostitution. But if this particular prostitute were to meet an unfortunate end, allowing the Church to turn her into a martyr without mention of her messy backstory? Well, that’s a win-win for everybody — except Stella, that is, and any future johns hoping to shed their pesky psoriasis or gout.

Holy F*ck, which is mainly set in the American South, has echoes of Carl Hiaasen, but author Joseph Incardona chooses a road less traveled that’s strewn with corpses. Translated from the French by Sam Taylor, the novel starts out feeling like a beach read, but the occasional crushed skull or crucifixion threatens to spoil the umbrella-drink vibe.

Incardona’s characters are memorable, though, and the story provides lots of laughs when it’s not being interrupted by gratuitous violence from the pontiff’s unsightly hitmen, the Bronski Brothers, who view their chosen vocation as more than just pumping a few bullets into a given target; it’s an artform.

Knocking off the woman should be easy for them, but Navy-Seal-turned-clergyman Father Brown stands in their way. He’s the one who put Stella in danger in the first place by making her healing powers public, so he decides he must be the one to save her. He also has to keep himself from sleeping with her (celibacy is hard) and knows the entire undertaking will test his faith:

“And now Father Brown was trying to drown himself in a bottle of gin. The honest purity of juniper, its ability to distort a reality that was biting him, sinking its teeth deep into his flesh. Whiskey brought peace. Gin was for war.”

And war it is because the Vatican needs a martyr more than it needs a random priest. The plot device is as old as the oldest profession — heroine and hero fleeing the powers of evil, seeking salvation in an unforgiving world — but Incardona peppers his tale with unique personalities who propel the action forward, and he does it with the hint of a smile on his face.

Still, one device he employs is more distracting than clever: He sporadically inserts himself into the story to tell readers that even he — as the author — knows the plot is getting away from him or that a certain scene seems implausible. It’s unnecessary, but I suppose it adds another layer of comedy. Besides, I can’t imagine anyone picking up a book called Holy F*ck with the expectation that it’ll play by the rules.

The author Stewart O’Nan used to ask young writers, when they were working on a story, if they could see how it would end. I don’t know if Incardona imagined ahead of time how Holy F*ck would wrap up, but getting to its conclusion is quite a trip. Yes, there are plenty of narrative potholes, but this is a fun ride that stays on the rails just long enough to bring everything to a climax…except Father Brown.

Celibacy is hard.

Drew Gallagher is a freelance writer in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He writes a weekly humor column for the FXBG Advance that you can pay for (or you can just click a tab that lets you read it for free, which is what his friends and family do). His debut humor collection, Funny for Nothing, came out last month.