'The Jennifer Morgue' combines a James Bond thriller with Lovecraftian horror and nerd comedy. This is my kind of novel.

A little background: Bob Howard works for The Laundry, a supersecret MI6 that deals in the Arcane. In this world, magic is just a form of advanced math: if you're smart enough, you can figure it out. Bob's job is to hang out on the internet and spot people who may be on the verge of figuring out.

That is, until he's called into his boss's office and sent on a mission to St. Maarten, where he must foil the world-domination plot of a megalomaniacal billionaire. Oh, and he must do it while partnered with a stunningly beautiful American assassin who may or may not be human. And the billionaire appears to command an army of zombies. And, well, we're just getting started.

So Howard puts his pasty, scrawny body on a plane to the Caribbean and gets to work. Can a guy whose diet appears to consist of Pringles and Mountain Dew get used to vodka martinis and cars with ejector buttons? And what eldritch horrors await among the pristine sands and glittering yachts of St. Maarten?

Ok, I hear you: this sounds like a train wreck of a novel - real Creative Writing Class stuff. But Charles Stross is a terrific storyteller! He has great fun with the tropes of the spy genre, he clearly loves Lovecraft, and he's adept with hacker (and hacky!) jokes.

I give you all this, plus an added short story featuring a deadly interdepartmental run-in with Villains from HR. I grinned all the way through 'The Jennifer Morgue.'