Amorality Tale is small and confined and takes place over a few days.

Who Killed Kennedy, David Bishop’s previous Doctor Who novel - admit it, you’d forgotten all about it, hadn’t you? - gained an extra level of verisimilitude through the author’s journalistic approach. That an investigation into London’s history by Sarah Jane Smith provides the impetus for the pleasantly-named Amorality Tale might suggest that this would be a similar venture: recent history, as it might have unfolded if Doctor Who were there...

However, the differences are rather more marked than such superficial similarities. Where Who Killed Kennedy sprawled, incorporating as many characters and locations from televised antecedents as could be squeezed into the pages, Amorality Tale is small, confined and takes place over a few days. Where Who Killed Kennedy investigated the world-shattering assassination of an internationally-renowned figure, Amorality Tale concerns itself with tragic events in London, from a similar era, which have been more-or-less forgotten. Less appealingly, though, where Who Killed Kennedy was audaciously, admirably convincing... Amorality Tale just isn’t.

It’s a tricky problem to define. It’s not as if the setting isn’t evocatively presented, or the regulars aren’t recognisable - although it seems odd that a relatively newly liberated third Doctor would settle down in south-East England yet again, even though it’s around thirty years earlier than usual. Neither is it that the characters we meet in 1952 London don’t ring true - in fact, there’s little, perhaps nothing, about Amorality Tale which could be described as objectively bad. Even the occasionally over-earnest moral tone seems fairly in keeping with the times, what with season 11 epitomising Doctor Who’s intermittent preachiness. Despite all that, though, at no stage did I feel involved in the events unfolding in the East End, and given that I have to travel through the place twice a day - and could almost throw a rock into several of the locations Bishop utilises - I might have expected to be more engrossed by a dramatic presentation of events from the area’s history of which I knew nothing. But somehow, Amorality Tale never really takes off. A shame, really - it does seem a perfectly workable idea...