The Jennifer Morgue

Computational demonologist Bob Howard is magically paired with Ramona Random, an agent from America's Black Chamber, and sent to investigate the activities of a billionaire whose plans for recovering a device called the Jennifer Morgue from the deep ocean have attracted the attention of both their agencies. Charles Stross structures the novel as a deliberate homage to the James Bond thriller, with the spy fiction genre's tropes interrogated and distorted by the Laundry universe's Lovecraftian rules.

Gideon Emery's narration brings full self-awareness to the novel's genre-play, capturing the difference between Bob's dry bureaucratic irony and the more operatic register of the Bond pastiche. His performance gives both registers their due without letting either undermine the other, which is the key challenge of Stross's hybrid approach. Emery handles the novel's appendix material, a Laundry-verse glossary and a short story, with the same commitment he brings to the main narrative.