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The Fuller Memorandum |  | Author: Charles Stross
Publisher: Ace
Category: eBooks
This item is no longer available
Rating:  reviews
Sales Rank: 2193
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Edition: 1
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.92
ASIN: B003RWSJME
Publication Date: June 30, 2010
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
National bestselling author Charles Stross brings back Bob Howard-"a British super spy with a long-term girlfriend, no fashion sense, and an aversion to martinis" (San Francisco Chronicle)
Bob Howard is taking a much needed break from the field to catch up on his filing in The Laundry's archives when a top secret dossier known as The Fuller Memorandum vanishes-along with his boss, who the agency's executives believe stole the file.
Determined to discover exactly what the memorandum contained, Bob runs afoul of Russian agents, ancient demons, and the apostles of a hideous faith, who have plans to raise a very unpleasant undead entity known as the Eater of Souls...
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| Customer Reviews:
 The Best Laundry Book to Date September 5, 2010
R. Albin (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States)
This is the best Laundry book to date. Less jokey and darker than the prior Laundry books, it still exhibits Stross' clever use of genre elements, bureaucratic satire, and computer technology insider jokes. Plotting and character development are better, including filling in the backstory of Bob Howard's terrifying boss, Angleton (another joke - named after the notorious head of CIA counter-intelligence). The dark feature is an end of the world motif, in this case related to the Lovecraftian aspects of the Laundry cosmos, similar to Stross' very dark story A Colder War. As shown by this book and the very ambitious Saturn's Children, Stross is not content to crank out similar books but is trying quite hard and successfully to produce increasingly better books. Even when it doesn't work completely, as in parts of Saturn's Children, this work is significantly better than his earlier work and most books of this genre.
Like a lot of relatively sophisticated SF/Fantasy, its plausible to see allegorical elements in this book. The obvious one is an analogy with contemporary religiously inspired terrorism. On the other hand, the end of the world theme in this book is the multiplication of an excessive number of human beings in a technologically advanced society is likely to trigger a civilization ending natural catastrophe. A bit like anthropogenic global warming.
A Mission of Questionable Legality* August 14, 2010
Nick Cato (Staten Island, NY United States)
Stross' third Laundry novel takes a little bit to get going, but once it does it begins to deliver on a grand scale.
For newbies: The Laundry is a top secret British paranormal secret service unit. Bob Howard is under its employ as a computational demonologist . . . sort-of like a nerdy occult-savy James Bond. Along with his supernatural-violin-playing wife, Mo, Howard returns this time to what seems like an easy task: getting his files in order at the Laundry's massive underground archives. But when it's discovered that a top-secret document titled The Fuller Memorandum is missing (quite possibly stolen by his boss, Angleton) Howard is off on yet another cross-genre / earth-rescuing adventure.
For fans of the series: With as much action and low-key giggles as the first two novels, THE FULLER MEMORANDUM is a fine entry into Stross' series. Horror fans can take note that the horror element is stronger here than in Howard's previous stories (a wicked demonic cult and an interesting take on zombies are a highlight, not to mention the ending takes place in the largest graveyard in England), and Howard's relationship with his wife Mo is explored a bit more deeply, proving you can still be a cool British secret agent without being a womanizer . . . or a martini addict.
With its (once again) fantastic take on the spy genre and clever use of "self-possession" during the edge-of-your seat finale, fans of Stross' Laundry series should leave this case quite satisfied. Hopefully the next installment will get here a bit quicker than this one.
(*-title of this review taken from page 171 of the hardcover edition)
 The best in the series yet August 7, 2010
K. Maxwell (Perth, Australia)
When an apparently routine exorcism goes bad for Bob Howard and his boss puts him on a week's sick leave the last thing he expects is to promptly be attacked by Zombies and for his boss to go missing. This felt like a more even story in pacing than The Jennifer Morgue and the story kept on dragging me back when I put it down. These books are like a cross between a horror story, James Bond and the classic Yes Minister: The Complete Collection series.
I recommend, if you read this that you also hunt up the two free Laundry short stories that Stross has on the net "down on the farm" takes place before this book and "overtime" takes place after. You can find them via the author's wikipedia entry. For fans of the series this book is great and really starts to flesh out the Laundry in ways the previous books did not. I hear that a fourth book is being written and as CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN swings more into action I'll be really interested to see what happens to Bob.
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