McAuley's fiction has changed over the last few years. Whereby in years gone by he was a straight sf writer of late he has moved more into techno-thriller arena. In some ways I am worried that this could become a trend, as McAuley and Michael Marshall (Smith) to name another, have shifted more mainstream, Dean Koontz also has moved this way over the years.

However all that said if McAuley is producing sharp fiction like this then I think that I cannot overly complain.

Alfie Flowers is a young journalistic photographer. He leads a fairly simple life, one pretty much forced upon him following a childhood incident which has left him suffering from occasional seizures. These seizures were traced back his accidental exposure to an artifact his grandfather had recovered from a archaeological dig in Iraq, and the glyph inscribed upon it in particular.

Alfie survives on a legacy of his father's work (also a photograher, but a war photographer – which lead to his death in Beirut) boosted by the sales he gets from his own work.

His most recent sale has been of graffiti appearing around London from a new graffiti artist with the tag Morph. Morph's graffiti is different to everything else appearing, for one thing it is monochrome, stencilled very political and contains a border pattern that Alfie recognises from the artifact his grandfather had – the item that affected him so badly as a child and so lastingly even into his adulthood.

One of Alfie's journalist friends (and the guy who got the deal by which Alfie's picture was featured in a newspaper to illustrate his own story onthe phenomenon) is eager to discover the truth behind these graffiti.

They are not the only people to have spotted this new range of graffiti, with its ancient symbolism and Iraqi libertarian message the British authorities have also taken note, and Harriet Crowley, a woman with associations with British Secret Services is also keen on discovering what is behind Morph's work.

This is a fairly intense taut thriller, with a slight amount of crossover into the worlds of science fiction. It's also quite dark, being grounded as it is in the current world situation, in Iraq and the events of the invasion and subsequent times.

I read McAuley's last book, another similar thriller, and much as he is a loss to more traditional science fiction, he is certainly proving himself to be a fine writer in the science thriller area.

Synopsis
When he chances upon a strange piece of graffiti daubed on the walls of a north London restaurant, the violence of his reaction takes Alfie Flowers by surprise. The thorny circle of dashes and zigzags seems to reach right inside his brain - and provokes a flashback to a terrifying childhood incident. The incident Alfie has spent his life trying to forget.

Convinced that the graffiti artist possesses the clues to his past, Alfie sets out to track down the elusive 'Morph'. His search will lead him to the mysterious Nomads' Club and a secret history of espionage, culminating in the disappearance of Alfie's father over twenty years before.

Yet the real secret of the graffiti patterns - or 'glyphs' - is to be found amidst the chaos of post-war Iraq. There, within the shadowy depths of an ancient network of caves, Alfie will uncover the powerful and disturbing truth behind the rituals of a strange, prehistoric society. But there are others seeking the source of the glyphs.

People with sinister and dangerous motives - and if they were to succeed in their aims, the consequences would be too horrible to contemplate...