[1] In Stross's world, the greatest magicians are the scientists who closely study the phenomena; it features a secret history of historical thinkers who also dabbled in or stumbled upon occult uses of their work.
The Laundry detects the disturbance and swoops in to give him a mandatory job offer ("I thought I was just generating weird new fractals; they knew I was dangerously close to landscaping Wolverhampton with alien nightmares"[6]).
Despite the nature of the work, the Laundry is an efficient and low-key modern organization; more cubicle-jockeying than stately mansion towers and hidden volcano lairs, in other words.
Bob and a team of SAS agents open their own gate, infiltrate the frozen universe, rescue Mo, and leave a nuclear bomb to 'sanitise' the scene.
Bob belatedly realises that the nuclear bomb is a counterproductive trap; the frost giant intends to use its power to propel it into their reality, which has far more heat to eat.
Howard reads classified files on the presumed cause: gorgonism, which has been banned by treaty for military use, and has been researched by various scientists over time – Lavoisier, Geiger, and Rutherford.
Howard, with the assistance of Detective Inspector Josephine Sullivan of Milton Keynes, investigates the incident, which soon expands to the murder of humans as well as cows.
[6] Publishers Weekly was somewhat mixed in their review saying that "though the characters all tend to sound the same, and Stross resorts to lengthy summary explanations to dispel confusion, the world he creates is wonderful fun".
Billington, the billionaire antagonist of the book, intends to repeat a 1975 CIA attempt to raise a sunken Soviet submarine in order to access the Jennifer Morgue, an occult device that allows communication with the dead, in spite of the hazard of awakening the Great Old Ones.
Where 2004's The Atrocity Archives is written in the idiom of Len Deighton, The Jennifer Morgue is a pastiche of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels[10] and refers to the real-life Project Azorian (incorrectly named by the press as Project Jennifer); Stross also uses footnotes and narrative causality, two literary devices common in the novels of Terry Pratchett.
Stross plays with expectations by having Ramona, one of H. P. Lovecraft's "Deep Ones", known as "Blue Hades" in Laundry speak, serve as the "bad" Bond girl, but Billington's identification of Bob with 007 proves to be wrong.
Where The Atrocity Archives was written in the idiom of Len Deighton and The Jennifer Morgue was a pastiche of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, The Fuller Memorandum is a homage of sorts to Anthony Price's Dr David Audley/Colonel Jack Butler series of spy thrillers, and features two minor characters named Roskill and Panin, names which appeared as recurring characters in Price's series.
In this novel, the protagonist Bob Howard, an agent for the intelligence agency known as the Laundry, is tasked with investigating American televangelist Raymond Schiller, who seeks to gain influence in Britain.
Bob finds out that Schiller, who preaches a quiverfull prosperity gospel, is serving a supremely dangerous supernatural entity and trying to bring about the end of the world.
The book introduces new allies for Bob: Persephone Hazard, a freelancing witch and secret agent, and Peter Wilson, a vicar and expert in biblical apocrypha.
As the world lurches toward the potentially apocalyptic forces that will probably bring about CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN (the Laundry's codeword for an inevitable worldwide awakening of Lovecraftian horrors, "the stars coming right"), regular humans have started developing superpowers.
She is unwillingly compelled to act in a police plot to control the minds of the British public in the interests of law and order, which it becomes clear will backfire, releasing the King in Yellow; she overcomes it with the help of her staff, destroying Lecter in the process.
To scout ahead, they send Agent First of Spies and Liars, the eldest living daughter of the Elven King, who takes over the human identity of a student named Cassie.
The rump of the Laundry executes a coup in cooperation with the surviving cultists from The Fuller Memorandum, bringing Britain under the rule of Nyarlathotep as a lesser evil.
She has been elevated to the House of Lords (taking the title "Baroness Karnstein") and serves under the new Prime Minister following the Laundry-engineered overthrow of the Government described in the previous book.
The new Prime Minister Fabian Everyman (an alias of Nyarlathotep) sends Mhari to the United States on a mission to discover what has happened to the now-missing President and who is running America in his stead.
Mhari and her team try to evade the deputy director (nicknamed DeeDee) and her agents, and despite fatalities manage to free the President to broadcast a reminder of his existence to the populace.
Dead Lies Dreaming was marketed as the tenth book in the Laundry Files series but does not concern itself with the titular agency or its members apart from an occasional cameo.
[21] The "Tales of the New Management" series jumps forward in time to depict the events under Prime Minister Fabian Everyman (an alias of the Elder God Nyarlathotep).
To this end, she recruits her younger brother Imp and his street gang made up of Game Boy, Doc Depression and the Deliverator, which in turn attracts the attention of Wendy Deere, a corporate thieftaker.
The nominal purpose of Bob's mission is to police minor versions of Yōkai:[23] a class of supernatural entities and spirits in Japan now growing more active as CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN progresses.
But it becomes apparent that the real reason he's been brought to Japan is to confront an existential threat in the form of a hellmouth located beneath the Puroland theme park and a terrifying version of the Princess Kitty cartoon character.
Season of Skulls is the third book in the "Tales of the New Management" trilogy, continuing the story that began in Dead Lies Dreaming and Quantum of Nightmares.
Stross published a short non-canonical work set in the Laundry Files universe on a fanfiction website, "The Howard/O'Brien Relate Counseling Session Transcripts – Part 1".
[30] Audiobook versions of the novels in the Laundry Files series have been narrated by Gideon Emery, Elle Newlands, Jack Hawkins,[31] Caroline Guthrie,[32] and Bianca Amato.