Just personal experience.
Better than some theoretically perfect practice of careful code reviews? I don't know. Better than code reviews as actually implemented everywhere I've worked? Yes. (In particular I find it's really hard to maintain the discipline of carefully going through each other's code when you know that most of the time you won't find anything)
Is the result better than with careful code reviews [of the critical pieces] (both after writing, but also short checks during development over a code listing and coffee)?
Intuitively, everything with coffee involved ought to be better! :-)