The Fuller Memorandum

May 31, 2010
Stross's third Laundry novel (after 2006's The Jennifer Morgue) continues to describe the Kafkaesque absurdity of government bureaucracies, but the tone turns dark when series hero Bob Howard accidentally kills a civilian during a routine exorcism. Bob soon discovers that there's a mole loose in the Laundry, the ultrasecret British intelligence service that deals with the implications of magic being a branch of pure mathematics. At issue is a memo by the Laundry's founder that relates to something called the Eater of Souls. The only person who knows anything about this is Bob's enigmatic boss, Angleton, but when he inexplicably vanishes, Bob and his wife and fellow agent, Maureen, are left on their own to stop CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN: the end of the world. The satisfying ending should appeal to fans of gory horror while making them question the definition of humanity.

July 1, 2010
Bob Howard, computational demonologist for the top-secret British agency known as "The Laundry," protects the world from incursions by entities from other dimensions, older and more powerful than the "elder gods" fictionalized by horror authors. When his boss goes missing, a secret dossier known as the Fuller Memorandum also disappears—and the world's existence becomes a risky proposition at best. Stross's latest series entry ("The Atrocity Archives, The Jennifer Morgue" blends hard-boiled humor with Lovecraftian horror and computer programming to create a twist on the occult detective novel. Howard is a distinctly unheroic hero, likable, self-effacing, and tenacious in his pursuit of unspeakable evil. VERDICTLike Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files," this series could prove popular among fans of urban and occult fantasy.

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2010
Imagine a world where gnarly Lovecraftian demons are all too real yet are routinely neutralized with high-tech wizardry by a supersecret British spy agency, and youll get an inkling of the genre-bending territory Stross explores in his Laundry Files novels. In the series third installment, Stross recurring protagonist, the underappreciated junior-level Laundry agent Bob Howard, confronts a horrifying new threat from the netherworld. His latest assignment begins innocently enough when his supervisor sends him to investigate a haunted airplane at an RAF museum. Then a botched exorcism accidentally kills a bystander, leaving Howard facing a Laundry internal inquiry, and things steadily get worse. After Howards wife and fellow agent returns home traumatized from an overseas assignment and Howard narrowly survives a run-in with a zombie hit man, the Laundry puts every operative on alert with Case Nightmare Green, a code name for a potentially world-ending showdown with the forces of evil. Stross enthusiasts more accustomed to the authors cutting-edge sf will nevertheless delight in this edgy, semiserious spoof of cold war spy thrillers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)