A man witnesses a crime, panics, and disappears into the big city of London. This book is, in part, a look at how people disappear in a modern western society. The main character disappears deliberately - essentially a withdrawal from every aspect of modern middle class life (home, cell phone, bank card, job, identity papers, altered appearance and even moral sense to a certain degree). But it is also a look at how large groups of people disappear or are invisible in modern society, as the main character ends up living with the marginalized of our world - immigrants, sex workers, drug addicts, petty criminals, illegal aliens, nutters.
There is also a thread about rebuilding a life, and a look at the real essentials: shelter, work, relationship, and how minimal the essential actually is.
The political/industrial juggernaut also has role, with a look at the meeting of the political, criminal and corporate world in the pharma industry complex. This is what lies behind the crime that the main character witnesses, and what he finds himself up against when he disappears.
A good read. Boyd is always interesting. If I had to characterize his fiction, I would say each book focuses in on one or two of the soft underbelly spots, the points of rot, that are the hidden side of modern politics and society. His stuff is worth rereading.
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