[In the following review, Saari praises the rich comic narrative of Straight Man.]

The running joke here is that the university is a three-ring circus of clowns and buffoons who provide an unending supply of hilarity. In the hands of Russo's William Henry Devereaux, Jr., or Lucky Hank to friends and enemies alike, the narrator [of Straight Man], life at the backwater West Central Pennsylvania University creates an unnerving anticipation of disaster. In a time of frenzy and wrath, Henry Devereaux, the interim head of the English department, finds attention directed toward him and his supposed hit list, the result of a 20 percent faculty cutback mandated by the campus CEO, Dickie Pope. Devereaux's colleagues are often vociferous in registering their contempt for him, but Devereaux is hardly timid in fending off the slings and arrows directed his way. In fact, he is a familiar type—an intelligent man who can't control his mouth, or as Dickie Pope observes, his goading. What he wants is often elusive even to himself. All hell breaks lose for Devereaux when he dons funny glasses and fake nose to announce on the local news show that he plans to kill a duck (actually goose) a day until he gets his departmental budget. Obviously a ruse on Devereaux's part, this is an effective device to teach his students the difference between comedy and tragedy; the local animal rights group supplies protective neck guards for the geese. With the stakes so small, Russo turns up the book's volume as high as he can get it, and the results are very funny indeed. The novel is rich in comic incidents—ones that will find you laughing out loud. Things turn out right in the end despite Lucky Hank's tendency to be irritating and indulgent of the pleasure he gets from the smart remark.