Angelmaker

This second novel from British writer Harkaway (after The Gone-Away World) is a long, wild journey through a London dream world as the planet balances on the brink of some big event. At his Thames-side workshop, clock repairman Joe Spork starts receiving strange visitors and threatening inquiries, all related to a machine he's been trying to fix as a favor for a friend. He soon realizes that a dangerous religious cult, in cahoots with the British government, is after this apparatus, which he has inadvertently set in motion with perhaps world-ending implications. As Joe is pursued around England and the body count rises, the novel delves into the story of Edie Banister, a secret operative for British intelligence before World War II who had been sent to Asia to confront a murderous dictator and kidnap a scientist working on an invention similar to Joe's.