The Jennifer Morgue

Written by Charles Stross

Narrated by Jack Hawkins

Some agents have all the fun. Others save the world.

Bob Howard is an IT expert and occasional field agent for The Laundry, the branch of Her Majesty's Secret Service that deals with occult threats.

Dressed (grudgingly) in a tux and sent to the Caribbean, he must infiltrate a millionaire's yacht in order to prevent him violating a treaty that will start a war with an ancient underwater race. Partnered with a gorgeous American agent who's actually a soul-sucking succubus from another dimension, Bob's mission is to stop the bad guys, avoid getting the girl, and survive—shaken, perhaps, but not stirred.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Little, Brown (Hachette UK) Audio
• Release date: Jul 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781405526050

Charles Stross

CHARLES STROSS (he/him) is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland. He has won three Hugo Awards for Best Novella, including for the Laundry Files tale “Equoid.” His work has been translated into over twelve languages. His novels include the bestselling Merchant Princes series, the Laundry series (including Locus Award finalist The Dilirium Brief), and several stand-alones including Glasshouse, Accelerando, and Saturn's Children. Like many writers, Stross has had a variety of careers, occupations, and job-shaped catastrophes, from pharmacist (he quit after the second police stakeout) to first code monkey on the team of a successful dot-com startup (with brilliant timing, he tried to change employers just as the bubble burst) to technical writer and prolific journalist covering the IT industry. Along the way he collected degrees in pharmacy and computer science, making him the world’s first officially qualified cyberpunk writer.

Reviews for The Jennifer Morgue

[NicholaAnkeMillen · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really love the reader of this audiobook. He has the perfect voice for Bob.

[Gerard Neaux · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's fun and I love the worldbuilding and the meta/postmodern bits but the characters are of the meh and ugh varieties. I don't know why male writers feel the need to write heroes with small d energy but I'm guessing it's the equivalent of the female writer owned Not Like Other Girls TM. This is reason to suspect such authors think these character types are sexy. Well Bob here is not like other girls. He's emotionally constipated, insecure af, and whines at the end that his girlfriend is the hero instead of him. This is definitely intended by the author (possibly for comedy) but the thing is that two extra hot chicks insta fall in love with this clothespin despite him having no personality other than the one described above, and a personal appearance I suspect can be described as acne prone. So I wish the author would err on the side of awesome because it's kinda awkward to follow characters that are gender typed into oblivion. But then the whole Bond geas plot is funny and fun and awesome, so...