Infernal devices

Victorian London watchmaker George Dower is drawn into a conspiracy when a mysterious "Brown Leather Man" brings in a strange device for repair, claiming George's late father built it. George's investigation leads him into conflict between secret societies, the Royal Anti-Society, the Godly Army, and an anti-vice league, and into Wetwick, a hidden district of human-fish hybrids.

Along the way he uncovers that his father secretly built clockwork automatons, including a superior mechanical double of George himself. Widely credited as one of the foundational novels of the steampunk genre, Infernal Devices plays much of its Victorian pastiche for dark comedy while still delivering a real conspiracy plot around clockwork invention and hidden societies.