The Annihilation Score

[sawyl]

A slight shift Charles Stross' Laundry Files series with The Annihilation Score seeing the passing of the narrator baton from Bob Howard to his wife and fellow Laundry employee Dominique O'Brien. Having spent most of the last decade at the sharp end of operations as the occult agency's elite assassin, her soul entangled with her weapon, the Pale Violin, made from human for the notorious Erick Zahn, Mo is on the verge of a catastrophic breakdown — personal, marital, spiritual — when a new career opportunity presents itself.

In the middle of a routine diplomatic meet-and-greet, Mo receives a crash summons to London: the Laundry's headquarters are under attack and a code red has been declared. Arriving just as the crisis of The Rhesus Files has been brought under control, Mo turns up at home to discover that Bob had offered accommodation to Mhari Murphy, his long-ago ex and now a newly fledged vampire. Tired and under huge emotional stress, Mo almost succumbs to the Pale Violin's desperate desire to kill both Bob and Mhari. Barely managing to contain her instrument, whom she's nicknamed Lecter, Mo realises that while Bob may not have been unfaithful to her, their current combination of supernatural powers are such that they can no longer live together.

In the aftermath of the previous night's near catastrophe, Mo receives a call from the Duty Officer ordering her to attend an occult event in Trafalgar Square: passers by are being stripped naked and telekinetically piled up on the Fourth Plinth. Arriving just in time to see the floppy-haired Mayor of London debagged, Mo identifies a suspect who appears to have superpowers and disarms him with her violin. Unfortunately the whole event is captured on a live TV broadcast and Mo finds herself suddenly famous. Realising that they need to do something to combat the growing superhero menace — something that appears to be triggered by the encroaching CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN — the Laundry decide that, with Mo's cover blown, they might as well put her up as director of a new inter-agency task-force on transhuman policy.

Dropped in at the deep end, Mo finds herself struggling to bootstrap her agency, working up a pitch to present to the Home Secretary and, almost before her feet are under the table, ordered to investigate a super-villain called Professor Freudstein. As if that wasn't enough, clear from the start that someone has been stacking the deck of the new agency. Mo's two principal deputies, appointed by the Laundry's HR department, turn out to be Mhari Murphy, who is still recovering from her near-death experience at point of the Pale Violin's bow, and Ramona Random, Bob's femme fatale partner from The Jennifer Morgue, and Chief Superintendent Jim Grey, who has been turning up in the most curious places of late.

The plot is driven forward by a combination of the slowly unfolding Freudstein investigation, the bureaucratic travails required to create a new agency while under the eye of a critical Home Secretary whilst also satisfying the requirements of the Laundry, who remain the puppet masters in control of the organisation's true agenda. Gradually Mo and her two co-workers overcome their problematic histories — including in Mhari's case Mo's barely restrained attempt on her life — to become solid friends and supporters. Jim Grey, a decent gent, goes out of his way to be a distraction, helping to get Mo out of the office before she dies of overwork and taking her to the opera and to concerts, whilst accepting the unresolved situation between Mo and Bob — which may or may not be terminal.

As the book progresses it becomes increasingly clear that Mo's principal struggle is against the increasingly dominant Lecter who, growing in power as the stars align, invades her dreams and makes the occasional attempt at possession. Worried that there will come a time when she is no longer able to resist her weapon's constant attempts to undermine her control, Mo confides in one of the Laundry's auditors, only to learn that every wielder of the Pale Violin, all of whom have been practitioners of the greatest ability, have followed the struggled with the same problem and have eventually managed to come to terms with finding a successor before the instrument has gathered enough power to eat the soul of its bearer.

Gradually the various apparently separate plot threads pull together, with Michael Armstrong, the Senior Auditor and apparently de facto head of the Laundry, giving Mo just enough of a heads up on the organisation's true agenda to terrify, worsening her PTSD and pushing her yet closer to the edge of a nervous breakdown. Amusingly events climax in the Albert Hall during The Last Night of the Proms with Mo replacing the soloist — the unnamed Janine Jensen, who so impressed Mo in the first half with her performance of Chausson's Poème — and eldritch horrors substituted for the gypsy swagger of Ravel's Tzigane.

There's so much to love about The Annihilation Score, but it's protagonist — more self-aware than her husband and able to see his motivations and problems more clearly than he is himself — offers a refreshing new view on a long-standing and truly excellent series of novels. Stross has a lot of fun with the cliches of the superhero narrative — the task-force are ordered by the Home Office to come up with costumes and backstories — whilst also managing to seamlessly dovetail it into the Laundry Universe's existing system of magic; which, of course, means that nothing comes for free and your average superhero is just as likely to get their brain eaten away by Krantzberg syndrome as have a productive life fighting crime.

The politics of the book are a bit of a delight. Although none of the politicians are referred to by their True Name, it's pretty easy to tell who is supposed to be who — although I'm sure the real Home Secretary can't be quite as humourless as the Thatcher-worshiping Jessica Green! There is also, by way of Jim Grey, a certain amount of musing on what policing means in the modern age and what counts as crime when criminals are able to reframe their behaviours as legitimate, turning themselves into legitimate politicians and businesspeople.

So: clever, funny, insightful and subversive, The Annihilation Score finds one of the smartest novelists around at the top of his game. A real delight.