A review by saoki
Doctor Who: The Romance of Crime by Gareth Roberts

3.0

A good story, but written in a slightly uneven way, so that some parts have too much description, others have so little I had to read them twice to understand where things were happening. The author knew how to write the Doctor, Romana and K-9, so every part of the story in which they had any part was elevated, much in the same way a good actor elevates a scene. The other characters, however, seemed to spend a lot of time repeating the same dialogues and thoughts, which helped to make them seem like caricatures (something that wouldn't have bothered me so much in a Doctor Who TV story, but somehow is taboo for me in books). And then there was the way the narrator pulled things from the character's minds, a debatable technique* itself made worse for its use for infodumping secondary characters' pasts.

In any way, this is an enjoyable book and a well crafted tale, if not very well written. The story is interesting and fast-paced, filled with perfect little moments of 4th Doctor goodness (even ogrons like jelly babies, after all) and a very fine villain. It would make for a great movie, if nothing else because a multimedia version of this story would cut out Spiggot's inner dialogue, all of which was a long running joke with a terrible punchline, and that itself would upgrade the story in one star.


* Honestly, reading this book taught me a lot more about how I see the limits of the omniscient narrator than debating this with other writers.