Illinois, USA, 1866. When 17 year old Francis Smalling’s elder sister is cruelly murdered before his eyes, he joins the National Pinkerton Detective Agency to help find the killer. Teamed with their top detective, Paul Chapman, they soon find that the killer has already struck three times, and a pattern emerges from their investigations. But Francis has other skills which he soon brings to the fore; he is a part-time scientist, an emerging light in the Victorian age of invention. He has dabbled in the new sciences for years, and uses his skill, intelligence and guile to bring his sister's murderer to justice. Francis's burning quest for Justice will shape his life, affect his family and friends, and perhaps change the world. The Clockwork Killer is a two-voiced story, told alternately by Francis Smalling, the seventeen year old scientist, and his Pinkerton partner, Paul Chapman. It is a novel of detection in the Victorian age, and so dips its toe in the Steampunk genre, but it is also a love story, a coming of age, a birth of a new science, while being mixed with a gruesome murder or three. The Clockwork Killer is the first in the new series, Steampunk Detectives. The second novel, The French Lieutenant's Widow, is due out next summer.