2008 books

[peteryoung]

23) Andrew Cartmel, Foreign Devils, 2002
The Doctor needs to establish what's going on with a time transference device that connects opium-drenched Canton in China in 1800 with a large house in the Kent countryside in 1900. The most unique thing about Foreign Devils is Cartmel's enlistment of William Hope Hodgson's supernatural investigator Thomas Carnacki to help solve the mystery, as well as a few strange murders along the way. Cartmel's telling of the story is as gentlemanly as his Second Doctor, but he's left a little too much unexplained. Also useful is one of Hodgson's own Carnacki tales, 'The Whistling Room', included here as a sampler for the uninitiated. I've now read all of the Telos Doctor Who novellas (several more reviews here); it was a small but groundbreaking series that frequently provided some very pleasant surprises.