Doctor Who

The Doctor and Romana, his new companion, land on a remote planet where something is wrong. A Krynoid, a shapeshifting organism, has started to infect everything near it and consume what it touches.

The pair have to work out what the creature really is before it spreads any further. The mystery comes first: they gather clues, follow the infection and try to learn how it can be stopped. Time is short, and each new discovery shows how much ground the organism has already taken.

Simon Messingham wrote this Doctor Who tie-in novel as a prose retelling of a Fourth Doctor serial first made in 1977. Readers who know the television version will recognise the outline, while newcomers can follow the story from the first chapter without any other background.

The book mixes adventure, mystery and a streak of horror. The pace is steady and the atmosphere tense, with the Doctor's wit cutting through the dread as the Krynoid closes in. The question that drives it is whether the two travellers can learn the creature's nature in time to halt it.