Doctor Who as Hammer horror? I'm sure that's been done, only I can't put my finger on exactly where... but behind the worst punning title for a Doctor Who novel yet, lies a story which is rather more than just that.

Like Millennium Shock, Grave Matter appears to draw some inspiration from its author's technical background. What Justin Richards understands better than some of his peers and predecessors, however, is how to present the science. Where in Millennium Shock the Y2K bug was explained in such simplistic terms as would have seemed necessary before the subsequent media explosion, here the intriguing notion of 'DNA computers' is explained in pop science gee-whizz terms which wouldn't confuse the least aware viewer of Tomorrow's World. Thus the author manages to remain within touching distance of the show's roots at the BBC.

In fact, in deploying such concepts as bodysnatching, unconsenting medical experimentation and the ethics of science, he has evoked distinctive themes of the era of the TV show in which he is working. Just as in Mindwarp and Revelation of the Daleks, the first person the Doctor and Peri encounter is a mutant - and from that meeting, the author proceeds to set the scene for a Fang Rock-style Victorian melodrama amidst the archetypal isolated community. Perhaps the "we don't like strangers" moment might have been more effective had there not already been one in The Hollow Men, but that doesn't really matter: he is messing with your mind. Delightfully.

Misdirection remains the dominant motif - Grave Matter seems to divert at a new tangent with each chapter. Even from such a prosaic question as whether a dead sailor had broken his arm or merely bruised it, Richards manages to wrest an astonishing degree of suspense. Sometimes you're a few steps behind him and sometimes one or two in front - he doesn't have Agatha Christie's ability to slip in genuine clues almost imperceptibly - but it's difficult not to believe that he's always in control, letting the reader take over for a while and enjoying his own cheek in doing so.