Synthesis is set in a sort of no-man's-land where anybody can bump into more or less anybody else. Life on the planet has gone from chaos to more chaos: It is winter. This is a city. The streets are filled for most of the time with motorized vehicles and people swarming the pavements. It is a crowded city in a crowded world where those who have taken it upon themselves to order things find it practically impossible to order anything. Maurice Wylie is a medical man with a complex, troubled background and a nagging conscience. His travails thread through this novel featuring a kaleidoscopic array of characters and circumstance. The theme of human identity and relationships is juxtaposed in time and space at many levels. "In common with the river, we are all subject to tidal influences." There are a number of important characters (some owning similar names) including the brothers Russell and Warren Styles, the latter who becomes an affluent, successful business man with architectural connections; hence all those towers reaching for Utopia anticipating, in a canny way - and as the cover illustration might suggest - the events of September 11th 2001.