The Missing Adventures
The Romance of Crime

Summary: 9/10 The fourth Doctor, the second Romana and K9 land on a prison asteroid. Insane criminals, Ogrons, lawmen, and eccentric artists follow in this missing adventure.

The Romance of Crime is quite silly. It is also nearly perfect.

The Romance of Crime doesn't leave you emotionally drained like many of the better New Adventures do, but it's just so damn much fun to read. The Doctor, Romana, and K9 are captured perfectly here -- this is the same Doctor and Romana of City of Death. I would think this would be a difficult era to work with -- as the writer doesn't have Tom Baker and Lalla Ward to bail them out of the stories weaker moments. Instead, Gareth Roberts has to recapture the chemistry the two had, and put it into words.

The Ogrons were quite an appropriate addition to a book from this period -- they were already silly to begin with. Of course, instead of the Daleks or the Master pulling their strings, we've got a set of criminals who continually cross each other. Of course, this story then fits right in perfectly with a giant green blobs and scientists with bad accents.

The book has all the elements of this period -- the Doctor pretending to work for some outside organization, K9's batteries running down or falling apart, Romana showing off how smart she is, "pseudo-companions" who trip into the story, eccentric secondary characters, and so on. Of course, many of these points are also twisted a little bit, which makes it more than just a Season 17 by numbers. It isn't ruined by being too silly, which is of course the big risk in writing something from this period of Doctor Who. It isn't just someone trying too hard to be Douglas Adams.

The other nice thing about this book is that it isn't "the Doctor saves the Universe", or even anything close to that -- it's fairly restricted in scope, and goes in a completely different direction. Which is also quite like 17.

The Romance of Crime doesn't get a 10/10 because it isn't revolutionary. However, most revolutions fail, so it isn't a terrible thing. However, it recaptures the era so perfectly, the characters are so well written and fun to read. If you like any part of Season 17, I think you'll love this book. And any season that contains City of Death can't be that bad.

It's time to dig up Horns of Nimon when I'm back home this weekend, don't you think?

9/10