This is book 5 of the "David Audley" series.

This note does not contain major spoilers for the book.

I've also got a general page on Anthony Price.

Grabbed this for something familiar to read as part of the process of recovering from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.

The strange part, where Paul is ingested by the bird (metaphorically), remains somewhat painful, but fascinating. He's remade quite quickly; or triggered to pursue goals he never knew he had. The Paul who shows up in later books is not the quiet safe researcher from the start of this one!