Books: Doctor Who: Frankenstein and The Patchwork Man by Jack Heath (2025)

“When an unsettling folk tale leads the Ninth Doctor and Rose to a remote village in Wales, they get more than they bargained for. A scientist has taken it upon himself to create new life – imitating Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a book that has sent shock waves around the country. But, much like his fictional counterpart, this doctor is playing god, and with forces beyond his understanding. As the Doctor and Rose attempt to put the brakes on the experiment before it gets out of control, a sinister supernatural presence reveals itself.”

Frankenstein and The Patchwork Man is a nice slice of Gothic terror that once dominated the early years of the Fourth Doctor. Heath is able to grab onto the voice of Billie Piper and make her Rose Tyler more realistic in book form – less so the Ninth, but that’s nitpicking here. 

It’s a well paced take that evokes the Mary Shelly title very well (even, though like Rose, I’ve not read the book, but have seen the film adaptations). It’s a solid young adult novel that will give both old and new fans a delightful treat. I like how much Rose grows here and why she became such a favorite of fans who had doubts about the actress and her role in the live-action show. Heath gives her plenty of heart –though she too becomes another companion willing to sacrifice her life because the Doctor puts her in great danger. Still, it’s done with creepy style and panache. 

Also, not one to questions an authors intention, but Heath is Australian, and I’m curious if he knew Wales probably does not have lochs. 

I’ve also read this is probably the last Puffin Crossover Classic for the Doctor, which is pretty sad. I think they’ve done well, and there could be more tales with different Doctors, but this appears to be the end of this lineup. 

Books: Gerald's Game By Stephen King (1992)

“Gerald and Jessie Burlingame have gone to their summer home on a warm weekday in October for a romantic interlude. After being handcuffed to her bedposts, Jessie tires of her husband's games, but when Gerald refuses to stop she lashes out at him with deadly consequences – he has a coronary. Still handcuffed, she is trapped and alone. Painful memories from her childhood bedevil her. Her only company is a hungry stray dog (the former Prince) and the sundry voices that populate her mind. As night comes, she is unsure whether it is her imagination or if she has another companion: someone watching her from the corner of her dark bedroom.”

 

When this book came out in 1992, I was rather turned off by the premise. I knew this was more a psychological terror novel than one of his supernatural ones, but the whole idea of a full-length novel about a women handcuffed to a bed did not seem like something I wanted to read then. Even today, some thirty years later, I’m still doubtful about some of his books. If only because there are a handful of King titles I’ve not read, this being one of them, as well as Delores Claiborne (a sort of “sister” novel to this one) and Misery, mostly because the premises did not seem to interest me (though, now that I think about, maybe because the "villains" of those books are more human than the supernatural kind, and real life is sort of horrible, especially now in 2025). It is also part of the reason I’m still going through his Bachman titles.

 

I do like Gerald's Game, but it’s a weird one, seemly more of an experimental one on King’s part to see if he could set a tale within the confines of one room. I also felt weirded out by his obsession with Jessie’s Dad and event of the (actual) eclipse of July 1963. King’s parents, in particular the mothers, are always a bit off. They all seem to have difficulties relating to their children. Most are mean and unpleasant. And for the longest time, I thought Jessie was imaging the “space cowboy” who hid in the corner of her room. I was sort of disappointed it turned out to be a real man. Scary? Maybe. But no so scary if the whole book was just focused on the serial killer.

 

It’s a another brutal book (again, perhaps started as Bachman title?), a bit overlong (alright, just too long), but beyond the idea of being handcuffed to a bed and almost no way to escape is a great metaphor for those who hate being confined, I found it a difficult read at times and wished for a different version. 

 

Books: The Impossible Fortune (The Thursday Murder Club #5) By Richard Osman (2025)

“It’s been a quiet year for the Thursday Murder Club. Joyce is busy with table plans and first dances. Elizabeth is grieving. Ron is dealing with family troubles, and Ibrahim is still providing therapy to his favorite criminal. But when Elizabeth meets a wedding guest who’s in trouble, kidnap and death are hot on their heels once more. A villain wants access to an uncrackable code, and will stop at nothing to get it. Plunged back into action once more, can the gang solve the puzzle and a murder in time?” 

It seems while writer Richard Osman was off starting a new series, some significant time has passed in Cooper’s Chase as well. Elisabeth is in deep mourning due to the passing of her husband, while Ron has seen his two children’s lives, along with his grandson, getting worse.  

But then there is Joyce and seeing to her daughter Joanna’s marriage to Paul. It is during the reception that Elisabeth meets a man named Nick Silver who believes someone wants him, and a woman named Holly Lewis, dead. The two are business partners who years earlier were paid to do a job (they being in the business of “cold storage” – essentially hiding things people don’t want other people to know) in Bitcoin. As risk takers –they acquired it from a drug dealer- they took a wait and see attitude with whether it would lose money or profit from it down the line. Eventually, as we all know by now, Bitcoin has become very valuable. Now they have a quarter of a billion pounds and want to cash it in. But trust among thieves is never a best bet. And this Impossible Fortune leads to much mayhem. 

The fifth Thursday Murder Club is crackling good and it’s clear that Osman is opening the series a bit more, making it less cozy whodunit in a small village in the English countryside and adding more layers (again, I think the characters of this series will eventually crossover into the We Solve Crime folks). There is added layer of poignancy here, with Elisabeth deep in grief over the loss of Stephen – so much to the point she has lost some interest with her club. The mother/daughter relationship shines brightly here, because while Joanna has had a recurring role in the previous four books, here she gets to shine and is more center to plot (meanwhile, Donna, Chris, and Bogdan take a back-step here). And like all familial relationships, Joyce and Joanna have their difficulties. It’s fairly realistic, I think. Another sub-plot involves why Ron’s son Jason has been taking care of his nephew and what has happened to his daughter Suzi (something that has been on the back-burner for a while in this series). 

The return of Connie –who remains not my favorite character- mentoring 18-year-old Tia in the ways of being a crime lord turns out to be surprising, as Ibrahim’s mentoring has seemly made Connie more human (but once a criminal, always a criminal?).  

The humor remains, though less laugh out loud than before. And Osman, wisely, has opened the premise of the series, which reassures a few more books, but the characters continue to develop nicely. 

Also, while I enjoyed Netflix’s adaptation of the first books a few weeks back, I was not happy with changes made, especially who the killer was. At this point, I’m unsure they’ll be following up with a sequel, partly because of the changes and ages of the cast have to be considered. It’s clear that Osman was writing this book during the movies production, because there is a funny in-joke involving Ron and Ibrahim talking about their favorite James Bond – with Ron choosing Pierce Brosnan.

It’s a fun ride.

Books: Doctor Who: Dracula! By Paul Magrs (2025)

“On what they hope is going to be a holiday, the Doctor and his companions arrive in a quiet, unassuming seaside town called Whitby, a civil parish in the English county of North Yorkshire. The terrible significance of the place evades them, until they happen upon a theater production that captivates their attention: Dracula! Suddenly, murders are occurring left, right and center, each victim with trademark puncture wounds on their neck. Ian is soon missing, and a town shrouded in myth and legend is beginning to live up to its name. Clearly there is a Dracula at large. But the TARDIS team quickly realizes: you can never trust a vampire.”  

The next Puffin Book that has the Doctor crossing-over with public domain characters continues with Dracula! There is more to this tale than meets the eye and longtime fans, who can read between the lines, will be treated to more than just the TARDIS crew interacting with a “supposedly” fictional character. It’s entertaining and fun and moves along at a good pace. I would be remiss in not pointing out that it does have massive bags of atmosphere, and uses the Bram Stoker tale story as a jumping-off point, rather than as a straightforward riff on a familiar tale. Set sometime during the first season of the classic series, Magrs does something unusual here, by having the vampire focus on Ian instead of –what generally happens in this genre- Barbara or Susan. A great twist. 

Some might find the supernatural elements in this science fiction series a bit odd, but here it actually fits in pretty well, as DOCTOR WHO has had a long association with the vampire lore dating back to STATE OF DECAY, a 4^th Doctor adventure from the Classic series. It was there that we learned that the Time Lords, during the earliest days of their time travel experiments, accidentally released the Great Vampires from another dimension into our dimension and how they spread throughout the galaxy, which is why almost every planet the Doctor has traveled to has some lore about creatures of the night.   

There is also a lot of real life history attached to it to this tale, though Magrs does not go too deep here. In some sense, this tale could whet the appetite of some young reader into looking at the real-life history of the origins of Dracula and writer Bram Stoker. 

A few notes: 

Paul Magrs was born and raised in Jarrow, which is little less than hour and half north from Whitby, but he has set his Brenda and Effie Mysteries supernatural series in Whitby. Those novels often incorporate elements of the town's Gothic atmosphere and its connection to Bram Stoker and Dracula, making Whitby a central character in those stories. Also, this book contains a character named Kristoff Alucard (a anagram of Dracula), who was created for his Iris Widlthyme character, a self-styled "transtemporal adventuress" of contentious origin who travels the multiverse in an age-old London double-decker bus, commonly known as Celestial Omnibus. She often resembled various television and film actresses throughout her many paradoxical incarnations. She met the Third Doctor in Extended Universe title Verdigris, also written by Magrs.

Books: The Secret of Secrets (Robert Langdon #6) by Dan Brown (2025)

“Accompanying celebrated academic, Katherine Solomon, to a lecture she’s been invited to give in Prague, Robert Langdon’s world spirals out of control when she disappears without trace from their hotel room. Far from home and well out of his comfort zone, Langdon must pit his wits against forces unknown to recover the woman he loves. But Prague is an old and dangerous city, steeped in folklore and mystery. For over two thousand years, the tides of history have washed back and forth over it, leaving behind echoes of everything that has gone before. Little can Langdon know that he is being stalked by a specter from that dark past. He must use all of his arcane knowledge to decipher the world around him before he too is consumed by the rings of treachery and deception that have swallowed Katherine. Against a backdrop of vast castles, towering churches, graveyards buried twelve deep and labyrinthine underground passages, Langdon must navigate a shadow city hiding in plain sight, a city which has successfully kept its secrets for centuries and will not readily deliver them. This is a battlefield unlike any he has previously experienced, one on which he must fight not for his only life, but for the future of humanity itself.” 

After an 8-year hiatus, Dan Brown returns with the sixth novel featuring Robert Langdon. As with the previous five, this one features his sometimes-difficult to read pulpy prose style, in a book that could be easily turned into a screenplay. However, the endless monologue-like TED Talks and the frequent use of the words “brilliant” and “stunning” would need to be altered. 

Brown sets up another “what if” scenario that borrows heavily from the real world study of neuroscience and turns it into some sort metaphor on hidden realities. He uses real people and locations, including delving into the Project Stargate (which involved the CIA and the military, and explored the potential use of extrasensory perception {ESP} and remote viewing for intelligence gathering during the Cold War) and other secret CIA projects that tip this novel more into science fiction, and try to make these experiments sound plausible. 

There is some interesting stuff here, though, including the parts about the subconscious mind and what happens to human consciousness after death. That was neat reading, because it is the undiscovered country, as Shakespeare once said, and it haunts everyone. However, much of the metaphysics that this book tries to WOW you with is not fully explained; it seems mostly there to force the reader into doing his or her own investigations. 

Like a broken record with a lot of today’s writers, at 677 pages, it’s overlong and it got annoying that was mostly due to Brown’s choice of reminding the reader of the plot of the book again and again (also the TED Talks). It’s not a total bloated mess, by far, and these books are fun (I’ve read them all and generally have the same opinion on them), but the pacing is a bit off here from the previous books. And I sometimes think Brown takes himself too seriously. I think he might actually believe in what he writes – no matter how wild the idea.

Books: Clown Town (Slough House #9) By Mick Herron (2025)

“Old spies grow ridiculous, River. Old spies aren’t much better than clowns.” Or so David Cartwright, the late retired head of MI5, used to tell his grandson. He forgot to add that old spies can be dangerous, too, especially if they’ve fallen on hard times—as River Cartwright is about to learn the hard way. David Cartwright, long buried, has left his library to the Spooks’ College in Oxford, and now one of the books is missing. Or perhaps it never existed. River, once a “slow horse” of Slough House, MI5’s outpost for demoted and disgraced spies, has some time to kill while awaiting medical clearance to return to work, and starts investigating the secrets of his grandfather’s library. Over at the Park, MI5 First Desk Diana Taverner is in a pickle. An operation carried out during the height of the Troubles laid bare the ugly side of state security, and those involved are threatening to expose details. But every threat hides an opportunity, and Taverner has come up with a scheme. All she needs is the right dupe to get caught holding the bag. Jackson Lamb, the enigmatic and odiferous head of Slough House, has no plans to send in the clowns. On the other hand, if the clowns ignore his instructions, any harm that befalls them is hardly his fault. But they’re his clowns. And if they don’t all make it home, there’ll be a reckoning.” 

More than once, I’ve felt that Jackson Lamb’s battle with Diana Taverner resembles the fight between the Doctor and the Master in DOCTOR WHO. Jackson is not a Doctor we would be allowed to have (though it comes close with the early episodes of Peter Capaldi’s tenure as the Doctor), but Taverner comes close to the Master, the one played by Roger Delgado in the Third Doctor days (and Herron has made many references to that BBC series in his books). It always struck me that Delgado’s Master was perfect manipulator of other people (and other aliens). He rarely (if ever) actually killed anyone –he had his hypnotized believers to do that, so there was always plausible deniability. Here Diana uses other people, manipulates both River and Sid, and four retired joes from the late 1980s/early 90s (who Lamb calls The Thursday Murder club at one point) to eliminate Peter Judd, who has been a thorn in the side of Taverner for several books and holds a secret that could dismantle everything she’s done since assuming the First Desk. And Diana –Lady Di- loves power and the creature comforts that come with it to have Judd ruin everything she has worked hard for. 

She may be evil, but she isn’t dumb. 

And Lamb, who misses nothing, sees things too clearly (though sometimes after things have shifted into play. 

Clown Town is a return to form, though I’ve liked all the books. The final third is a runaway train with Herron's ability to combine action, farce, tragedy (we lose another joe) and taking on politics (though clearly made up here, it does resembles real life politic too well). As I noted, Lamb could be a Doctor if the BBC really let the character be more realistic and less fantasy. Because it would be interesting to see what this Time Lord would do when pushed into a corner, with a companions (or Lamb’s joes) put in the position that Taverner put both Sid and River.