**A rollicking romp of a spy thriller from the acclaimed author of The
Gone-Away World. - "A head-spinning cliffhanger that reads a bit like
Harry Potter for grownups.... It would be a shame if no movie were made
from this glorious piece of kaleidoscope-fiction." --The Wall Street
Journal
**
Joe Spork fixes clocks. He has turned his back on his father's legacy as
one of London's flashiest and most powerful gangsters and aims to live a
quiet life. Edie Banister retired long ago from her career as a British
secret agent. She spends her days with a cantankerous old pug for
company. That is, until Joe repairs a particularly unusual clockwork
mechanism, inadvertently triggering a 1950s doomsday machine. His
once-quiet life is suddenly overrun by mad monks who worship John
Ruskin, psychopathic serial killers, mad geniuses and dastardly
villains. On the upside, he catches the eye of bright and brassy Polly,
a woman with enough smarts to get anyone out of a sticky situation. In
order to save the world and defeat the nefarious forces threatening it,
Joe must help Edie complete a mission she abandoned years ago, and he
must summon the courage to pick up his father's old gun and join the
fight.