It's a source of irritation that David McIntee's books are so consistently poor, since the guy is obviously not without talent. With The Face of the Enemy, as with The Dark Path, he has cut back on the platitudinous purple sludge which once stood in for prose in his novels, but doesn't seem to have found much by way of style with which to replace it. In common with his other books, it is based on a gimmick, rather than an idea. Consider each one reduced to basic principles: the first thing which springs to mind is not David's own creations, but how the novel ties in with the series' 26-year continuity - a sequel to The Talons of Weng-Chiang, the second Doctor meeting the Master, the first purely historical novel, and so on. If the basis of this book were to be summarised in a single line, it is not about gangsters in mid-70s Britain, or about events on a parallel world. Rather, the aspect which is obviously foremost in the mind of the author is to report what the Master and the UNIT crowd are up to while the Doctor and Jo have disappeared off to Peladon, and I think that means there's a skewed priority somewhere.

In this particular case, The Face of The Enemy also has a major identity crisis. The first third is a competent homage to the '70s British cop show genre, albeit replete with pointless references to The Sweeney and the writer's typically distracting in-jokes, in this case on the subject of The Professionals. As usual, the book is clumsy and over-written, the dialogue never seems like natural speech and the characters fail to emerge from the page, but it isn't too much of a struggle to read. These minimal plus points disappear before the book is halfway through, as it flirts with Bond and Avengers pastiche before a sudden shift toward science fiction sees it end up as a sequel to an earlier televised story and the author's own The Dark Path.

Perhaps David could curtail the irritating, unfunny in-references, temper his obsession with the Master, and avoid the unnecessary inclusion of characters from the show's TV history who have no real business being in this book if it is to be considered more than hamfisted fan fiction. He might also learn how to report a scene from an individual character's point of view (would someone casually glancing in a mirror really give thought to his own "lean face and hawkish nose"?), and consider that his readership is not as interested in the minutiae of his research as he obviously is.

It's an improvement on his previous work, though, and if he persists at this rate, he might produce a decent novel this millenium. He's never written a better one, but it's still not very good.