RogerBW's Blog

2006 modern occult secret service, second in the Laundry Files series. Bob Howard is sent to a Caribbean island to stop a billionaire from destroying the world with magic.

For me this was mostly on a level with The Concrete Jungle. It's the Ian Fleming pastiche of the series, but it owes rather more to the James Bond films than to the books; given how relentlessly sadistic the books tended to be, I can't regard that as a bad thing.

So yes, of course there's a Hot Babe, but she's an actual succubus.

"Every guy I've ever slept with died less than twenty-four hours later." It must be my expression, because a moment later she adds, defensively: "It's just a coincidence! I didn't kill them. Well, most of them."

It turns out that the only way to break through the dubious enchantments set up by the villain is to follow the pattern of a Bond film plot, but of course Bob doesn't work out what's going on, or his narrative role, until it's far too late; it feels in retrospect as though everyone else is keeping him in the dark simply for the joy of it (though in practice of course it was to prevent the reader from realising what was going on from the beginning). But it is a Bond plot, and while justifying the use of it is a great piece of authorial sleight of hand that doesn't make the basic shape of the story any less predictable. What works to generate interest, therefore, is not the core plot but the embellishments to it.

The characterisation is pretty flat, again, except for put-upon Bob himself. There are still piles of infodumping. Lovecraftian references seem to be there more for the name-drops than because they have any relevance to the plot.

And yet, as with the better pre-reboot Bond films, there's a goofy fun about the whole thing that carries me over most of the rough spots.

Most editions include Pimpf, a short story in which Bob gains an intern and nearly loses him again. Followed by The Fuller Memorandum.