Nick Harkaway is John le Carré’s son (Harkaway and le Carré are both pseudonyms), and the two apparently share a love of espionage, but Harkaway veers away from his father’s genre, into an amped-up amalgam of espionage, pseudo-steampunk, crime fiction, romance, adventure…

angelmakercoverI finally decided that Angelmaker is pulp fiction with literati ambitions. It is also quite humourously absurd.

The protagonist, Joshua Joseph Spork, repairs clockworks. Joe’s father, Mathew ‘Tommy Gun’ Spork, deceased, was the infamous king of London’s criminal underground. Joe decided to turn his back on his father’s ‘business’; instead, he followed in the footsteps of his paternal grandfather, who owned an antique clockworks shop. As the novel begins, Joe somehow becomes involved with the Ruskinites, an extremely dangerous sect, and an unknown branch of the government, in the guise of two odd men, Mr. Titwhistle and Mr. Cummerbund (“These are our actual names, I’m afraid” Mr. Titwhistle explains to Joe).

There is an assortment of colourful characters in the book, for example: Edie Banister, an octogenarian spy (my personal favourite); Shem Shem Tsien, a dastardly villain and Edie’s arch nemesis; Polly Cradle, Joe Spork’s love-interest and definitely not a shrinking violet; and Françoise ‘Frankie’ Fossoyeur, a frenetic super-genius who invented (among other things) the Apprehension Engine, a mechanical beehive — complete with mechanical bees — that may be a doomsday machine, but is possibly a machine created for the betterment of mankind. There is also a secret-service cult, the monastic ‘Ruskinites,’ who have come under the control of Shem Shem Tsien (cast as a handsome, but evil, Fu Manchu type).

The novel slips between genres, for the most part quite smoothly, and I really enjoyed the set up, but I didn’t enjoy the second half quite as much as the first: there is too much comic-bookish over-kill. I think I would have enjoyed portions of the novel much more as a younger man; perhaps I’ve become a fuddy-duddy.

The book becomes increasingly restless as the end nears and the lead-up to the climax is quite tumultuous; there are some riveting sections, but the ending passes rather quickly after the big build-up.

Harkaway juggles numerous balls, managing to maintain the integrity of the story quite impressively. All-in-all it is quite a delightful novel, but I think that some additional editing and a little more focus could have improved the book; it is an entertaining read, and there is some truly fine writing, but there are uneven portions as well.

After re-reading the above I realize I’ve been harder on the novel than I’d intended; it really is a rollicking good read, quite well written, and I’ll be sure to read more by the author.

Angelmaker is Nick Harkaway’s second book; I haven’t read his first novel, The Gone Away World, but I will. He also has a new novel out later this year (Tigerman; July 2014 in Canada) that I’ll find the time to read.

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