Curious Case of the Clockwork Man - Hardcover

Mark Hodder

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1907777024 ISBN 13: 9781907777028

Publisher: Snowbooks, 2011

Synopsis

It is 1862, though not the 1862 it should be...

Time has been altered, and Sir Richard Francis Burton, the king's agent, is one of the few people who know that the world is now careening along a very different course from that which Destiny intended.

When a clockwork-powered man of brass is found abandoned in Trafalgar Square, Burton and his assistant, the wayward poet Algernon Swinburne, find themselves on the trail of the stolen Garnier Collection?black diamonds rumored to be fragments of the Lemurian Eye of Naga, a meteorite that fell to Earth in prehistoric times.

His investigation leads to involvement with the media sensation of the age: the Tichborne Claimant, a man who insists that he's the long lost heir to the cursed Tichborne estate. Monstrous, bloated, and monosyllabic, he's not the aristocratic Sir Roger Tichborne known to everyone, yet the working classes come out in force to support him. They are soon rioting through the streets of London, as mysterious steam wraiths incite all-out class warfare.

From a haunted mansion to the Bedlam madhouse, from South America to Australia, from seances to a secret labyrinth, Burton struggles with shadowy opponents and his own inner demons, meeting along the way the philosopher Herbert Spencer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Florence Nightingale, and Charles Doyle (father of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle).

Can the king's agent expose a plot that threatens to rip the British Empire apart, leading to an international conflict the like of which the world has never seen? And what part does the clockwork man have to play?

Burton and Swinburne's second adventure?The Clockwork Man Of Trafalgar Square?is filled with eccentric steam-driven technology, grotesque characters, and a deepening mystery that pushes forward the three-volume story arc begun in The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack.

About this title

About the Author

Mark Hodder is the author of A Red Sun Also Rises and the Burton & Swinburne novels The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack, The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man, and Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon. A former BBC writer, editor, journalist, and web producer, Mark left London, England, for Valencia, Spain, to de-stress and write novels. He has a degree in cultural studies and loves British history, good food, cutting-edge gadgets, Tom Waits, and a vast assortment of oddities. He's the creator and caretaker of the Blakiana website celebrating Sexton Blake, the most written-about fictional detective in English publishing history. Visit him at markhodder.blogspot.com, www.facebook.com/ burtonandswinburne, and on Twitter @TheDissuader.

Review

Praise for the Philip K. Dick Award-winning Burton & Swinburne books:

"The usual superlatives for really clever fantasy (imaginative, mind-bending, phantasmagorical) aren't nearly big enough for this debut novel. With this one book, Hodder has put himself on the genre map."
-Booklist, starred review of The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack

"Hodder, with an encyclopedic grasp of period detail, tellingly brings these disparate, oddly familiar yet eerily different worlds to fecund life. Enthralling, dizzying, and as impressive as they come."
-Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Every once in a while I come across a book, or series of books, that totally yanks the carpet out from under me. Then it reaches out, smashes me in the face with its awesomeness, and says, 'You love me!' Leaving me with naught to do but obligingly respond, 'Yes. Yes I do.' [The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man] was every bit the book that I had hoped it would be."
-Elitist Book Reviews

"Whatever one chooses to call [The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack], it would be very difficult to deny its overwhelming brilliance. I can't remember the last time a novel has surprised, awed, and enthused me so utterly that I'm almost left at a loss for words for how to recommend it."
-Rob Will Review

Edition details

• Publisher: Snowbooks
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1907777024
• ISBN 13: 9781907777028
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416