As he staggers away from the chaotic aftermath of an explosion in downtown Shanghai, American Jake Bannon has bigger problems than the ringing in his ears. He has reawakened into a world of amnesia where he is prey to relentless pursuers from China...and America.

Bannon is a man of method, a meticulous pharmaceutical scientist who leaves nothing to chance. As his business trip draws to a close, everything has gone like clockwork.

On a rare impulse, Bannon decides to take a stroll through an old haunt, a shopping district in Shanghai. It's a fateful decision that changes everything as an explosion rips through the early morning air. Chinese authorities, already on high alert from recent incident with Japan, are quick to the scene of the blast. Through the cloudy dust and eerie silence, they have already identified their man.

As Bannon struggles to reconcile the shattered fragments of his memory, he realizes that he is being hunted. And now Bannon has nothing but his instinct to guide him and a persistent voice ringing through his mind:

It's time to go.

At the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous investigation, Bannon is stalked through the backstreets of Shanghai, an environment where survival and the machinations of fate throw him into the arms of Grace. Seeing Grace jolts Bannon's memories and his real identity slowly returns. Bannon knows he can't trust anyone but with the authorities banging at the door, he has no choice.

Like Clockwork is a contemporary espionage novel in which MF Thomas, author of the acclaimed thrillers Arcade, Seeing by Moonlight, and A Sickness in Time, has created a suspenseful portrait of a Shanghai in tumultuous upheaval.