Oh yes, it is certainly true that Brust's strength (for me) is twisty plots that wrap themselves up very neatly within the book, and his multi-book arcs are more messy. Whereas Baker's twisty multi-book arc is much more thought out, but her plots within-book aren't all that.

The competent snarky somewhat-slimy person with surprising integrity and a soft spot is Awesome. (Hmm... I wonder if competence may be correlated with integrity to a certain extent, in the sense that a person without integrity will cut corners and therefore not do so well in the competence category: see Labenius.)