Excellent Missing Adventure with characterizations so crisp and real it's like watching an episode. The finale is both hilarious and touching. Outdoes the Romance of Crime and that's saying something ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/546078.html

The author confesses in his notes that he deliberately aimed to write a novel that could have been filmed in a gravel pit, and he certainly succeeded. I very much liked the way in which the apparent theatricality of the setting turned out to have well-founded roots; I was able to suspend my disbelief in the layers of plot convolution which probably wouldn't survive careful analysis; the shock ending was audacious but successful; I liked also the characterisation of Romana. Not so convinced by the characterisation of K9, especially his interaction with the Doctor; and the Femdroids fell into the category of one of my pet hates. I did like the idea of K9 running for President, but unfortunately it didn't last for long.

I couldn't really recommend this book to anyone who wasn't already a Doctor Who fan, but I think it captures the early season 18 feeling (The Leisure Hive / Meglos) very well, with both the good and bad points of that. ( )