I recently got a boxed set of Doctor Who novels, featuring the 9th and 10th Doctors along with Rose Tyler, from a second-hand bookshop. I've been enraptured by them, so I'm reviewing each one. The first book in the set is The Clockwise Man by Justin Richards. This review contains spoilers, so if you intend to read the book yourself, suffice it to say that this is a good one that I do recommend to any Doctor Who fan.
This story is set in 1920s London, and there's been a murder. But first, when the Doctor and Rose first arrive, there's an assault. They witness a Mr. Dickson being attacked in the street the moment they start their tour of the city. They manage to scare off the victim's attacker, and then escort him home, where they're invited in for supper.
Over the course of the evening, they meet some key players, and eventually find their way to a boarding house. And that's when the deaths start happening. Out in London, with the boarding house and Mr. Dickson's home seemingly at the eye of the storm. The trouble is, there don't seem to be any obvious connections, only lots of mysterious bystanders. Many of the guests in the boarding house aren't particularly suspicious, and in fact many are too elderly to be a likely serial killer. So what's going on, and what the heck is up with the Painted Lady?
The Painted Lady is a posh woman who wears a full face mask at all times. Locals believe she's an eccentric wealthy socialite, and the Doctor isn't very curious (maybe surprisingly, if I'm honest) about her. Of course, she ends up being an alien, which feels like the author's double-bluff. She's so obviously an alien that you spend half the book convincing yourself it would be too obvious for her to be an alien. But she is one, and she's on Earth hunting for an war criminal. She's been tasked by her people to bring him to justice. This plot fits neatly in with the concurrent Russian revolution, and there are some Russian refugees in the book whose story sometimes mirrors, and sometimes gets entangled with, the alien's mission.
The story is arguably heavy on plot and characters. There are a lot of people in both the Dickson home and the boarding house, and realistically I couldn't keep track of them all and didn't care about most. There's a scene where a former military gentleman protects 2 elderly guests in the boarding home from some mechanical opponents, and I'm not sure we'd "interacted" with any of the people involved before that scene. I think their names had been mentioned earlier in the book, but to me they were just names. I didn't have any emotional connection to them and didn't care whether they lived or died.
There's also a hefty amount of plot to unravel. There's the fugitive, there are Russian refugees, there's Big Ben, mechanical soldiers, and a killer house cat. There's a lot happening, and in retrospect it's hard to recall what mattered and what was just added distraction.
The thing is, none of that negatively effected how good a read the book was. With every chapter, the stakes were raised or shifted just enough to keep me intrigued. I read this book on holiday, and it was absolutely one of those books that competed with the holiday itself. There were several times where I had the choice to venture out into the city I was visiting, or sit at a café to read just-one-more-chapter, and I happily chose to read.
Part of the appeal of the book, I think, was the chance to steal a little more time with the 9th Doctor and Rose. Eccleston was only the Doctor for a series, but he was really good, and Rose is one of my favourite Companions. It's refreshing to spend more time with this combination, and the author does a nice job of capturing their personalities. I don't know how much this Doctor feels like Eccleston because that's what I'm envisioning in my mind as I read, but the writing at least doesn't get in the way or prevent me from doing it.
I noticed, as I was reading, that the author frequently separated the Doctor from Rose. This annoyed me a little, because to me the fun thing about Doctor Who are the interactions between the Doctor and his Companions. Deliberately separating them for a good part of the story felt like a mistake.
Shortly after reading the first 5 of the books in the set, I started re-watching the new Doctor, beginning with episode 1 of series 1, and I was surprised to see that this was the standard formula. At least in the first series, the Doctor and Rose probably spend more time apart than they do together (I mean on screen.) Their adventures split the party far more than I remembered.
After some reflection, I've decided that this convention probably wasn't a bad thing, at least on telly. Chemistry on screen can be extreme, and Rose and the Doctor definitely had it. Put them in every scene and every shot together, and it loses its potency. Better to keep them separate so the audience is always asking for more.
I could be wrong, but I'm not sure the same is true for paperbacks. Chemistry reads differently than it looks, and I think I'd have preferred to see Rose and the Doctor work through an adventure together. They're both interesting and engaging on their own, but I found myself wanting to read more of them together. Then again, these were early days for the series, and it's possible that the authors tasked with drumming up new stories just didn't have a feel for these characters yet. In fact in the Acknowledgments, Justin Richards thanks:
script editors Helen Raynor and Elwen Rowlands, who have kept me honest and provided invaluable insight into the characters of the Doctor and Rose.
It may very well have been that there wasn't enough onscreen material yet to calculate how realistic interactions would take place.
As written, both the Doctor and Rose come across basically the same as in the show, so mission accomplished.
This was a fun book, and a good Doctor Who story. Maybe it's a little cluttered, maybe a little frantic at times, but it's also the exact right mix of all the right ingredients. Clockwork thugs in 1920s London, anachronistic cats with lasers, alien political intrigue, and the Doctor and Rose. You literally can't want for more.
Photo by Charlie Seaman on Unsplash