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This isn't the far ultratech world of Singularity Sky or the near-future ultratech of Halo, nor is it the dark eldritch tech-horror of A Colder War. It's, maybe, the tongue-in-cheek version of that latter.
So magic, at least the more or less demon-based sort of magic, is real, and the world's governments are engaged in a constant low-level war to keep it under control and keep the world from a messy end. Mathematical thought has a direct effect on the universe, and on its relationship to other nearby universes, as do various messings-about with electricity and so on. Only those with sufficient need-to-know are allowed to have a copy of the suppressed fourth volume of Knuth (hacker jokes abound).
Demonology is now a science, if a horrifying and suppressed one. "In the case of the great circuit of Al-Hazred, the terminator was originally a black goat, sacrificed at midnight with a silver knife touched only by virgins, but these days we just use a fifty microfarad capacitor." And if you happen to stumble onto some significantly dangerous part of the truth, you find yourself more or less involuntarily enlisted in your nation's equivalent of the Laundry, the secret UK bureaucracy where our hero works.
In all that context, we get really two entirely separate stories: "The Atrocity Archives" was serialized in Spectrum SF in 2001-2, and "The Concrete Jungle" is a new novelette that's packaged in the same binding. Also in here (at least in the Golden Gryphon Press edition that Bill lent me) is an introduction by Ken MacLeod, and an afterword by the author that's well worth reading (thoughts on spy novels and horror novels and computer hackers, and recommendations of the novel "Declare" by Tim Powers and the role-playing game "Delta Green").
If you like the idea of eldritch horror crossed with modern computer science, with tongue slightly in cheek (a pinch of Douglas Adams) and essentially happy endings (although there are dark moments), then I certainly recommend The Atrocity Archives.
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