Author: Charles Stross
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Ace Trade
Publication Date: January 6, 2009
Cover Art: Mark Fredrickson
Just about everyone has heard the phrase, “The name is Bond. James Bond.” Now try saying, “The name is Howard. Bob Howard.” Hmm… Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it?
Bob Howard is a demonology hacker for the Laundry, the British occult intelligence group spun off as a black operations organization in 1945. Bob is attending a conference discussing bureaucratic protocols between intelligence agencies when the meeting goes horribly wrong. All the other agents have their souls destroyed by possessing demons. Apparently, Bob has stumbled upon a plan by billionaire businessman and entrepreneur, Ellis Billington, to dredge up an ancient alien weapon from the ocean depths. Teamed with a beautiful and deadly American female assassin, Bob is ordered stop this madmen in his bid to take over the world. Does any of this sound familiar? Except the part about the not-so-plucky hero, it’s the basis for every James Bond book and film in existence.
Bob Howard, however, is not James Bond. Bob is fairly new to field operations and he is thrust into a role for which he completely unprepared. He is trained to handle demons, not conduct espionage and interact in high society like some rich playboy. And that is exactly the point of the book. He isn’t supposed to be James Bond because The Jennifer Morgue is a parody. It pokes fun at the suave, high class, secret agent cliché of the Cold War.
You know damn well if Bond auditioned for a secret service job they’d tell him to piss off. We don’t need upper-class twits with gambling and fast car habits who think that all problems can be solved at gunpoint and who go rogue at the drop of a mission abort code.
Although the book is a parody of the secret agent cliché, I like how Stross actually uses that in the book’s plot. In The Jennifer Morgue, Billington isn’t truly evil but he takes on the persona of a diabolical villain in order to hamstring any response by the opposition such as the Laundry. He does this by creating what is essentially a probability field around him. In order to penetrate the field, you have to fit the criteria for the model used to create it, which turns out to be James Bond. All of this is done of course to control the outcome. I have to admit I was quite surprised at the level of manipulation between the main Billington and the two main intelligence agencies. The level of manipulation is rare in any of the Bond films and it certainly helped create an interesting story.
Something else that I found interesting is that The Jennifer Morgue has “magic”. I honestly wasn’t expecting it in a “spy” novel. It really isn’t magic per se but probably technology used in a way that resembles magic rituals. Demonic possession, pentagrams, spells, et cetera. I was a little confused at first because it seemed that the “magic” in the came almost out of nowhere. Things began to make more sense when I discovered that Stross had already written a book called The Atrocity Archives featuring two novellas, also starring Bob Howard. The good news is that The Jennifer Morgue can essentially be read as a stand-alone novel, much like the original Ian Flemings Bond books probably did.
Besides the main story, there is also a short story included called, “Pimpf”, in which Bob Howard has to save a rookie agent from being used by an ambitious manager from human resources. There is also an afterword by Stross on the golden age of spying, which is worth reading.
Overall, The Jennifer Morgue was a fun and entertaining read. It’s a humorous and adventurous spy caper that will appeal to a wide range of readers. It’s not a great novel by any stretch of the imagination but it would be a good choice for a beach vacation read. Aruba, perhaps?
