Аннотация

It is 1862, though not the 1862 it should be... Time has beenaltered, and Sir Richard Francis Burton, the king’s agent, is oneof the few people who know that the world is now careening along avery different course from that which Destiny intended. When aclockwork-powered man of brass is found abandoned in TrafalgarSquare, Burton and his assistant, the wayward poet AlgernonSwinburne, find themselves on the trail of the stolen GarnierCollection—black diamonds rumored to be fragments of the LemurianEye of Naga, a meteorite that fell to Earth in prehistoric times.His investigation leads to involvement with the media sensation ofthe age: the Tichborne Claimant, a man who insists that he’s thelong lost heir to the cursed Tichborne estate. Monstrous, bloated,and monosyllabic, he’s not the aristocratic Sir Roger Tichborneknown to everyone, yet the working classes come out in force tosupport him. They are soon rioting through the streets of London,as mysterious steam wraiths incite all-out class warfare. From ahaunted mansion to the Bedlam madhouse, from South America toAustralia, from séances to a secret labyrinth, Burton struggleswith shadowy opponents and his own inner demons, meeting along theway the philosopher Herbert Spencer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel,Florence Nightingale, and Charles Doyle (father of Sir Arthur ConanDoyle). Can the king’s agent expose a plot that threatens to ripthe British Empire apart, leading to an international conflict thelike of which the world has never seen? And what part does theclockwork man have to play? Burton and Swinburne’s secondadventure—The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man—is filled witheccentric steam-driven technology, grotesque characters, and adeepening mystery that pushes forward the three-volume story arcbegun in The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack.