The Rhesus Chart

The Rhesus Chart is the fifth and most recent novel in Charles Stross??? LAUNDRY FILES. Bob Howard has been moving up the ranks in the Laundry ??? not due to any particular motivation or ambition on his part, but just because he has managed, so far, to stay alive as he and his fellow agents battle the eldritch horrors who are trying to find their way into our universe so they can eat us.

While doing some data mining in his office one day, Bob happens to notice a small but statistically significant outbreak of an illness that looks like Mad Cow disease in an area of London. Curious, he begins to investigate by consulting a neurologist, looking at cadavers, and tracing the habits of the people who???ve died of the disease. Eventually this leads him to a small group of data analysts who work for a London bank. One of them accidentally ... Read More: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/reviews/the-rhesus-chart/

Bob Howard continues to age with interest, as does his wife Mo. I'm both amused and saddened by events in this installment of the Laundry files. Of course, the good news is that Spooky seems to be getting along fine in his or her new circumstances. Or is Stross just setting us up for something terrible to be named later?

This time around, Stross tackles the issue of vampires within the world of the Laundry Files. On the face of it, this is a different horror trope than the ones typically seen in the series, although, of course, vampirism is cast within the context of the series' wider setting and, as such, makes perfect sense within it. Indeed, a key plot point (mentioned pretty much in the first sentence of the book) is that nobody within the Laundry actually believes in vampires. Which makes hard for to combat them effectively.

It's another good Laundry book, with the usual mixture of horror, action, and humour. A fair bit of the action takes place in the Laundry itself, so that we get to see a bit more of its higher-level workings. There's also a change from earlier books in that we see a larger proportion of events that take place when Bob isn't around - almost all of it still narrated in present tense, as Stross tends to prefer, but not so much in the first person. This helps by expanding the scope, as well as allowing us a better view of some of the characters that Bob doesn't interact with very much.

As for the vampirism itself, this is a clever take on the creatures that both utilises some of the familiar tropes while undercutting others. In most respects, they're clearly the vampires we're familiar with, but the explanation for them has a logical rationale, and some of the details differ accordingly (they're not literally ‘undead', for example).

Although Mo is away for most of the story, the toll that having to live through this is taking on the main protagonist is not ignored. Bringing back the vicar who appeared the previous volume as a new Laundry employee experiencing its world for the first time has a similar effect. While there are some background events that seem to be setting the ground for future developments, the larger plot arc of the series isn't much advanced here until the very end of the book when a large and dramatic change takes place.