Strongly recommend the Laundry files. Note that they start rougher (hewing very close to the original concept of "grumpy sysadmin in weird circumenstances") but quickly mature into more.
Pretty sure Mr. Stross is a regular around here. I personally couldn't warm up too much to his Laundry or Merchant Princes books, but Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise are excellent, and Accelrando was also fun.
