After an encouragingly healthy dearth of sequels of late, BBC Books present the second such effort in as many months. Corpse Marker is unique, however, in that it is by the same writer as the source material - Chris Boucher being responsible for The Robots of Death.

In that story, the Doctor predicted that if robots were indeed responsible for the killings on Storm Mine 4, that it would lead to the end of the victims' civilisation, and Corpse Marker extrapolates on that theme. Only Uvanov, Toos and the forgotten, robophobic Poul survived the original tale. Taren Capel, the cybernetic genius who forced his creations to kill against their will, was undoubtedly himself killed by them. So why does he now have a band of followers back in Kaldor City which believes he still lives, having turned against his creations?

Corpse Marker retains some of the murder mystery impetus of the original, down to avoiding spoiling any surprises for those strange few who might never have seen it. While the aura of calm menace - exuded by the small, softly spoken robots - is inevitably lacking, compensation is provided through the cyberpunk aesthetic of Kaldor City, replete with airborne short-range transport, a dark undercity populated by undesirables, and a political climate in which everyone is justifiably suspicious of everyone else. Rather obvious perhaps, but nevertheless easy to conceptualise - and anyone who didn't know Chris Boucher was one of the architects of Blakes 7 could guess, given Corpse Marker's band of ambiguous terrorists/freedom fighters. There's also a significant guest appearance by psycho-strategist Carnell from that series' episode Weapon, again manipulating events to the benefit of his employers - and again, making one erroneous assumption which throws all his calculations out...

It's perhaps over-reliant on knowledge of the source material - although it's not reaching far to suggest that most readers of Doctor Who novels will be familiar with The Robots of Death - but unlike the shatteringly disappointing Last Man Running, Corpse Marker gives the impression that Boucher is becoming more competent and comfortable in his relatively unfamiliar role as novelist.