The Jennifer Morgue

The Jennifer Morgue is a novel by Charles Stross, the second full-length novel in his Laundry Files series. It was first published in 2006 by Golden Gryphon Press.
== Synopsis ==
In this book, set in 2005,Charlie's Diary, "The Laundry Files: An Updated Chronology". Bob Howard, an operative of the British occult spy agency The Laundry, is assigned to thwart the efforts of billionaire Ellis Billington to raise a Soviet sub that contains the Jennifer Morgue, a device that allows one to talk to the dead--and risks the awakening of the Great Old Ones. Howard is accompanied in this task by Ramona Random, an agent of the Laundry's US counterpart, the Black Chamber, who is also an emissary of the Deep Ones, who are referred to by the code name Blue Hades.
Howard and Random travel to the Caribbean island of St. Martin, which Billington has placed under an enchantment that only allows people to enter if they fit into spy genre stereotypes, so Howard tries to adopt a James Bond persona to allow him access. He and Random nevertheless are captured and held prisoner on Billington's yacht, where Dominique O'Brien arrives to save them--leading Howard to realize that it's actually O'Brien who embodies the Bond archetype, and he actually entered the island under the Damsel in Distress archetype. O'Brien kills Billington using the White Violin.
== Behind the Mythos ==
The submarine that drives the plot is the same one that the CIA tried to raise in 1975, using Howard Hughes' Glomar Explorer.Wikipedia, "Soviet submarine K-129 (1960)". The CIA's effort was referred to in the press as Project Jennifer.Federation of American Scientists, Intelligence Resource Program, "Project Jennifer/Hughes Glomar Explorer."
While the first novel in the series, The Atrocity Archive, was an homage to British spy novelist Len Deighton, The Jennifer Morgue took James Bond as its model--"riffing off the Broccoli movie franchise version of Bond, not Iain Fleming's original psychopathic British government assassin," Stross notes.
== Publication History ==
The novel was first published in hardcover by Golden Gryphon Press in 2006, accompanied by the Laundry Files short story "Pimpf". It was reissued in paperback in 2007 by Orbit, then as a trade paperback in 2009 by Ace Books.The Internet Speculative Fiction Database, "Title: The Jennifer Morgue".
== References ==
Category:Charles Stross works
Category:Expanded Mythos Works
Category:Novels