Yeah, I would agree with those things. The Annihilation Score was pretty good, but I got super bored by The Nightmare Stacks. I started The Delirium Brief, but couldn't really get into it.
Have you or johnnyFive read A Colder War, the novelette that seems to have started Stross down the path to the Laundry Files? I can heartily recommend checking it out; it's much darker in tone, and I frankly like it much more than the Laundry Files series (although I really did like the first couple of books.) A Colder War is definitely one of my favorite short stories. (As a side note, the version of the novelette that's in one of the yearly scifi anthologies edited by Gardner Dozois is slightly better than the one I linked to
I agree. He seems to be trying what with the Laundry becoming public and all, but I'm not sure if it's going to work out.