Doctor Who's Putrid Ham
A quest through the Dr Who novelisations
"The excellent ham of Doctor Who is more than a little off"
1974 Times Literary Supplement review of Doctor Who and the Crusaders (quoted from David J Howe's The Target Book)
"bastard"
DOCTOR WHO AND THE ENEMY OF THE WORLD
by Ian Marter
First published 16 April 1981 (1), between Logopolis and Castrovalva (2)
It’s hard not to dream a little when it comes to Doctor Who and the Enemy of the World. Here’s a book that was nearly David Whitaker’s third Who adaptation (3) but instead ends up, at least by the Doctor Who Target Book Club’s reckoning, as ‘one of the worst’ novelisations. I wouldn’t go quite so far but it is, especially considering the sublime glory that is ‘The Enemy of the World’, a definite disappointment. None of what goes wrong here has much to do with Marter, in fact he does some sterling stuff. Instead, looking at Whitaker’s published proposal and cherry-picking some criticisms made by others, I would, indeed will, argue that the problem lies with the broadcast episodes and Target.
Let’s start with Marter. As Whitt points out, ‘There’s very little Marter in here’, his prose style only really noticeable at the start, the end and in ‘the blood’ (5). The start refers to ‘the description of the TARDIS landing on the beach’ (6), a lovely but incidental detail lauded by Chris Marton in his 1981 review. The ending is altogether odder, Marter taking the scene where the Tardis in in flight with its doors open, recounting it from Victoria’s perspective and presenting the Doctor and Salamader as almost interchangeable. As she looks at the Doctor, holding on to her to stop her flying out the Tardis doors, ‘she seemed to see only the monstrous Salamander, his teeth bared and his eyes burning with crazed delight’ (7); looking at Salamader trying to operate the console, ‘she seemed to see the Doctor, deliberately throwing the TARDIS out of control’ (8). Perhaps the ‘eyes burning with crazed delight’ is a reflection on the Doctor’s adventure-lust, his thrill at that moment akin to Salamander’s ambition for world domination; perhaps Salamander ‘grappling frenziedly with the console’ is all too reminiscent of the Doctor’s piloting; perhaps the ‘endless limbo where Time and Space were inextricably entwined’ somehow reveals a deeper connection between the two than just their physical similarity – it can’t be said exactly what Marter’s up to here because it comes from nowhere and nothing is done with it.
The ‘blood’, however, runs through the novelisation and is an unquestionable Marter trait. In this grim and very human thriller, it fits perfectly. To demonstrate, let’s take Fariah’s death as an exemplar. It might seem an unnecessary change to the broadcast episodes but having Kent witness her shooting (9) allows events to be communicated as if from his perspective, hearing first a ‘crackle of shots’ and then seeing ‘bright red holes’ explode across Fariah’s white tunic (10) before finally understanding what has happened (11), recreating the TV viewer’s experience of the event. Shortly after, Marter adds details to Fariah’s dying scene that compensate for the loss of Milton Johns’s performance, capturing Benik’s easy resort to cruelty in the way he grabs Fariah’s hair (12) and shakes her by it (13) as well as his impotence, screaming and ‘shaking with rage’ (14) all while Fariah, though twisting in agony (15), calmly keeps her tongue (16). Benik’s desperate resort to his pistol (17) and its futile discharge into the ground (18) effectively sums up both. It seems right that the Doctor should here declare Earth ‘the most hostile and irrational place I have ever known’ (19).
Where this novelisation falls flat was identified right back in 1981 by Chris Marton. He talks of how ‘vast chunks of the story have been cut’ leaving the story to ‘chop about so much that there is no natural flow’ (20), a verdict more recently shared by the Doctor Who Target Book Club Podcast (21). According to Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles, this was not the fault of Marter’s delivered manuscript but a result of editing for length by Target (22). Perhaps Marter could be faulted for going over the wordcount, but that criticism can be headed off by looking at how Whitaker proposed to fit the story into ‘39,000 words’ (23), even allowing for 250 of those being ‘Who’ (24).
Some of the changes, to be fair, seem unlikely to have made much difference (25); others are intriguing at how fundamentally he planned to change things, such as making Benik Bruce’s ‘assistant’ (26), and it’s difficult to know whether the Doctor leaving Salamander ‘to the justice of the people of the world’ (27) would have trimmed or added to the wordcount. Crucially, though, he intended to lose ‘some of the sub-plots and less essential characters’ (28), which the first line of his synopsis reveals includes dropping Victoria (29). His suggestion that Troughton’s dual role, though ‘effective’ onscreen, wouldn’t lend itself well to prose (30) might have meant much of the lookalike stuff was up for the chop, though not completely as the Doctor’s ‘resemblance to Ramon Salamander’ (31) is still significant. Similarly, though the Doctor still demands ‘proof’ before acting against Salamander (32), Whitaker’s line that ‘the Doctor gets closer’ (33) might have signalled his pursuing that proof, alongside Kent, more actively and so meant Jamie’s undercover mission to Hungary was out the window. It’s frankly impossible to know from the proposal what Whitaker planned to lose, but his insistence on ‘a free hand’ and keeping only ‘the basic thrust of the story’ (34) make it clear he saw problems not just with the transition from screen to page but also in fitting all the details of the serial into a Target novelisation.
Accepting this is a rare example of a Who story that struggles to comfortably fit a short book (even six-parters frequently luxuriate in the space), you could argue Marter should have taken up the baton of the free hand – he’d already shown a penchant for it in Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment. Subtracting, however, is rather braver than adding. David J Howe points out that fans in ‘the late '70s and early '80s’ seemed to have come to appreciate the more creative novelisations over those that stuck ‘strictly to the televised stories’ (35), but a quick look at Keith Miller’s reaction to Philip Hinchcliffe’s ‘absolutely disastrous […] omission of Amelia Ducat’ in 1977, and that from a reviewer professing a love of the likes of Whitaker for avoiding a ‘'script-to-book' style’ (36), or at John C Harding’s very particularly phrased celebration of Marter’s ‘middle road’ between ‘verbatim’ adaptation and originality (37), suggests Marter may have been right in 1981 to navigate any story changes cautiously. Bear in mind, Whitaker would to some extent likely still aim to produce, in David J Howe’s words, ‘a self-contained novel’ (38), something which didn’t necessarily embrace the manner in which Target, for which he never wrote, had definitely become ‘an ongoing book series’, something which would perhaps tread dangerously close to the ‘original novels’ which Harding in 1983 envisaged as a step to far and something which, to be honest, would have had much greater legitimacy anyway coming from the original scriptwriter rather than Marter.
Where Marter offers changes, they’re much more in line with the Dicksian tendency toward plot ironing and clarification – making clear how the Doctor gets into Salamander’s sanctum (39) and how Salamander makes his way to the Tardis (40), plus seeding the reveal of Kent’s true nature, whether through his reluctance to risk his safety to try and rescue Fariah (41), the Doctor sensing something ‘odd’ in him he ‘could not fathom’ (42) or mirroring Salamander’s similarity to ‘a cornered animal’ (43) in Kent’s pacing ‘like a penned animal’ (44). The only place where it feels Marter cuts a little loose is the above-mentioned ending, including the moment where the Doctor regains control of the Tardis by calming it with ‘murmuring gentle, reassuring words’ (45) in what could almost be a homage to Whitaker’s vision of the Ship, which might even simply be the result of Marter not getting the script for part one of ‘The Web of Fear’ and compensating for the distinctly abrupt ending.
If Wood and Miles are right and the choppiness resulted from Target’s editing then Doctor Who and the Enemy of the World provides a valuable insight into what the publisher prized when words had to be lost considering what went to the press wasn’t always exactly lean. Where on TV, for example, Kent has one line reminding Astrid to ‘Switch to scramble’ (46), the novelisation eats up its wordcount not just giving the directive to the Doctor but having him repeat it (47). Perhaps they like having the Doctor actively involved wherever possible? Another example has a clearer motive – the detail that one of Salamander’s alleged victims was Astrid’s father (48) gives her a little motivation and brings the threat home to the reader effectively. Quite why Target were so keen to keep the alloy ‘Salamandrium’ (49) in the book is less clear – does his having a metal named after him, like the Daleks have Dalekanium, establish his villainous credentials? Or perhaps the metal preceded him and he adopted the name to reflect his strength, like Stalin. The fact that escape other than by Tardis isn’t an option for Salamander because the Doctor poured seawater into his helicopter’s fuel tank (50) is nice to know but hardly essential. Why it was considered vital to explain ‘the New Year holiday’ was the reason the building housing Kent’s office was deserted (51) I can’t even guess.
Let’s assume these and several other nuggets didn’t survive the editing process because they were judged vital. Now, the Who range seems to have been helmed by many very capable editors – Richard Henwood (52) and Brenda Gardner (53), for example, found promotion with other publishers and Michael Glover’s short stint was, at least according to Target stalwart and one-time Who editor herself, no surprise ‘as he was always destined for greater things’ (54) – but they mostly didn’t stick around very long (55), suggesting the range was a bit of a stepping stone. It also, thanks to Dicks, largely ran itself (56) at least, according to The Target Book, up to and beyond 1978 (57), so much so that Target seems not to have even appointed an editor for much of 1977 and 1978 (58) and again for a shorter time around the end of 1979 (59). Around the time Doctor Who and the Enemy of the World was being put together, the editor was Christine Donougher, someone who was admittedly not enamoured with the Who job (60) but who also went on to be an award-winning translator (61) so was likely perfectly capable of getting the best out of someone else’s words. However, Doctor Who and the Enemy of the World was also one of the four 1981 books (62), those most affected by the 1980 Writers’ Guild strike which took out Dicks (63) presumably as unofficial editor as well as a writer, so the range might have been suffering a little turmoil at the time.
On top of all that, despite the Who range forming, at least commercially, the essential core of W H Allen (64), 1979/80 was the time Bob Tanner made the discovery that the market for the books was remarkably resilient, not changing as he raised the price whilst making no change to the wordcount (65). As Nigel Robinson observed, this was a range that seemingly maintained its success even ‘without […] any thought or direction’ (66). Essentially, unless (or, as it turned out, until) someone with an investment in the range came in, the Who books were running on autopilot and Doctor Who and the Enemy of the World’s editing was just the point where a clear symptom popped its head over the parapet.
Height Attack
Astrid’s ‘a tall attractive woman of thirty’, Fariah’s ‘a tall West Indian girl’, Bruce’s 007 back-up Forester’s ‘a tall, visored figure’, Rod, one of the men who tries to kill the Doctor on the beach, is a ‘huge figure’ with an ‘enormous arm’. Even Denes gets in on the act with his ‘high forehead’.
Marterisms
Do other writers just put Dicks’s description through an auto-Thesaurus?: ‘an unearthly grinding and howling sound’
A gorgeous yet surprisingly ungory bit of Marter description: ‘Salamander looked at the broken figure kneeling there with splayed arms and open-mouthed stare like a discarded puppet’
1 Based on the Popular Television Series, ed. Paul Smith
2 epguides.com/DoctorWho
3. He submitted a proposal to WH Allen in October 1979, according to Doctor Who Magazine #200, 9 June 1993 (p.12).
4. ‘this is one of the worst ones’ (Tony Whitt, Doctor Who Target Book Club Podcast Ep 39: The Enemy of the World, 1:00:00) – he gives it ‘one out of five’ (59:38) and demonstratively declares ‘I really hate this book’ (58:26)
5. ‘There’s very little Marter in here. You’ve got that scene at the beginning; you have the one at the end; you have the blood’
Tony Whitt, Doctor Who Target Book Club Podcast Ep 39: The Enemy of the World, 59:03
6. ‘Some of the writing has much to commend it, like the description of the TARDIS landing on the beach’
Chris Marton, reviewing Doctor Who and the Enemy of the World in fanzine Wheel in Space; quoted in David J Howe, The Target Book, p.71
7. ‘Victoria felt as though she were engulfed in some unspeakable nightmare. When she twisted her head round to look at the figure whose hand she was desperately clutching, she seemed to see only the monstrous Salamander, his teeth bared and his eyes burning with crazed delight’
8. ‘And when she looked the other way across at the maddened creature grappling frenziedly with the console, she seemed to see the Doctor, deliberately throwing the TARDIS out of control and steering them all into an endless limbo where Time and Space were inextricably entwined, trapping them for ever’
9. ‘She waved frantically and called out as she saw Giles scrambling into the driving seat’
10. ‘Simultaneously there was a crackle of shots behind her. A series of bright red holes exploded across the back of her white tunic and she was hurled against the wall’
11. ‘A security guard ran up and stood over her writhing body with his pistol levelled’
12. ‘He twisted Fariah’s curly black hair in his thin claw-like hand’ – I’m a bit confused by what Marter’s willing to class curly
13. ‘Benik screamed, shaking the dying girl by the hair’
14. ‘“Who is the stranger?” he repeated, shaking with rage’
15. ‘Fariah’s body arched in agony’
16. ‘You can’t threaten... me, Benik... I can only die once... and someone’s beaten you... to it...” she whispered’
17. ‘he pressed the barrel of his pistol between her eyes’
18. ‘Benik’s finger squeezed the trigger, the officer pushed the gun aside. “Sir! She’s dead!” he cried. The shot ripped harmlessly into the ground beside her head’
19. ‘this planet of yours is the most hostile and irrational place I have ever known’
20. ‘vast chunks of the story have been cut. So have huge portions of dialogue. This is a pity, as it makes the book chop about so much that there is no natural flow, and this jars more than once’
Chris Marton, reviewing Doctor Who and the Enemy of the World in fanzine Wheel in Space; quoted in David J Howe, The Target Book, p.71
21. On reading out the review, both Dalton Hughes and Tony Whitt agree
Doctor Who Target Book Club Podcast Ep 39: The Enemy of the World, 51:18
[https://soundcloud.com/doctorwhotargetbc/ep-39-the-enemy-of-the-world]
22. ‘Marter’s manuscript went over the word-count. Target / W. H. Allen made the edits, and rendered large parts of the book incoherent’
Tat Wood & Lawrence Miles, About Time 2; p.160
23. ‘an adventure which can be gripping and entertaining to the end of its 39,000 words’
David Whitaker, reprinted in Doctor Who Magazine #200, 9 June 1993; p.12
24. ‘Doctor Who returns to Earth’ – though he perhaps wouldn’t have resorted to his full name every time…
David Whitaker, reprinted in Doctor Who Magazine #200, 9 June 1993; p.12
25. ‘The Tardis hides itself in a cave’ – though it’s intriguing how Whitaker writes the Tardis as making active choices
David Whitaker, reprinted in Doctor Who Magazine #200, 9 June 1993; p.12
26. ‘a new and aggressive Security Force headed by a clever and intelligent chief, Donald Bruce and his ruthless assistant, Benik.’
David Whitaker, reprinted in Doctor Who Magazine #200, 9 June 1993; p.13
27. ‘the Doctor refuses to carry Salamander away in the Tardis. He leaves the enemy of the world to the justice of the people of the world’
David Whitaker, reprinted in Doctor Who Magazine #200, 9 June 1993; p.13
28. ‘dropping some of the sub-plots and less essential characters’
David Whitaker, reprinted in Doctor Who Magazine #200, 9 June 1993; p.12
29. ‘With his companion Jamie McCrimmon’
David Whitaker, reprinted in Doctor Who Magazine #200, 9 June 1993; p.12
30. ‘it enabled the actor playing Doctor Who to play, for the first time, an additional role […] what is visually surprising and effective does not always lend itself to the purely narrative form’ – and, yes, I’m aware of ‘War of God’ too
David Whitaker, reprinted in Doctor Who Magazine #200, 9 June 1993; p.12
31. ‘The reason the men tried to destroy the Doctor was because of his resemblance to Ramon Salamander’
David Whitaker, reprinted in Doctor Who Magazine #200, 9 June 1993; p.12
32. ‘Much as the Doctor may accept Giles Kent on face value, he prefers proof against Salamander before he moves against him’
David Whitaker, reprinted in Doctor Who Magazine #200, 9 June 1993; p.13
33. ‘Gradually, the Doctor gets closer until at last he and Giles Kent penetrate Salamander’s provate [sic] records room’
David Whitaker, reprinted in Doctor Who Magazine #200, 9 June 1993; p.13
34. ‘I have allowed myself a free hand; keeping the basic thrust of the story’
David Whitaker, reprinted in Doctor Who Magazine #200, 9 June 1993; p.12
35. ‘During the late '70s and early '80s, there seems to have been a shift in the fan base from wanting the novelisations to adhere strictly to the televised stories (witness Doctor Who Appreciation Society president Jan Vincent-Rudzki's comments […] regarding Gerry Davis's divergence from the televised version of 'The Tenth Planet' for his 1976 novelisation) to them openly embracing those novels (mainly, at the time, the Ian Marter-penned ones) that extrapolated from or presented a different slant on the source material’
David J Howe, The Target Book, p.49
36. ‘Although his interpretation of a TV story is a bit more fluent than perhaps Mr Dicks's, he still fell into the dreaded 'script-to-book' style. I don't think I'll ever be happy until I find another Whitaker, Strutton or Letts ... What I thought was absolutely disastrous was the omission of Amelia Ducat’
Keith Miller reviewing Doctor Who and the Seeds of Doom in a 1977 Doctor Who Digest; quoted in David J Howe, The Target Book, p.45
37. ‘The important word here is adaptation. [The] writers are not there to turn out original novels, but neither are they there to commit the script to print verbatim, [and] Marter steers a middle road with a deft skill’
John C Harding reviewing Doctor Who and the Ark in Space in 1983 fanzine Ark in Space; quoted in David J Howe, The Target Book, p.46
38. ‘When the three Doctor Who titles were originally written, they were never intended to be a part of an ongoing book series. In fact, David Whitaker's adaptation of Terry Nation's scripts for the first Dalek adventure took great liberties with the source material. Whitaker realised that he had to write a self-contained novel that could exist without reference to the TV series’
David J Howe, The Target Book; p.23
39. ‘He did not see the small, neat figure slip through the doors behind him just an instant before they whispered shut’ – that’s how the Doctor get in
40. ‘“Oh, and the Doctor sent his compliments to you. He flew out half an hour ago,” Forester added, turning away to supervise the confiscation of tapes and cassettes from the Sanctum. Bruce gripped Forester’s arm and swung him round again. “What are you talking about? I’ve just this minute seen him off!” he exclaimed. Forester returned Bruce’s disbelieving look. Then his face went very, very pale...’
41. ‘Kent had witnessed Fariah’s fate but he had kept quiet, fearing that the Doctor would have insisted on trying to rescue her’
42. ‘the Doctor again looked hard at the wiry Australian reflected in the mirror. There seemed to be something odd about the man, but still the Doctor could not fathom it’
43. ‘For the very first time since he had known Salamander Bruce suddenly saw him shaken and on the defensive. He knew that just as a cornered animal can become instantly ferocious, a man like Salamander could become a terrible threat once he was trapped. No one would be safe’
44. ‘Giles was moving about agitatedly like a penned animal while Astrid watched him calmly’
45. ‘The Doctor was no longer shouting. With his forehead pressed against the console he seemed to be murmuring gentle, reassuring words to his beloved apparatus, trying to calm it enough to give him time to reach the vital stabilisers and thus regain control’
46. ‘KENT: Astrid, you're back. Switch to scramble.’
chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/5-4.htm
47. ‘Before the Doctor could stop him, Giles greeted her with delighted relief. “Astrid, we’d almost given you up. Where are you?” The Doctor shoved him aside and spoke into the screen with quiet urgency. “Astrid, switch to scramble immediately. Do you hear me? Scramble”’
48. ‘“Jean Ferrier—Finance Deputy, European Zone. An expert skier but disappeared, presumed dead, on nursery slopes in perfect weather...” […] Eventually the Doctor went across to Astrid and laid his hand gently on her shoulder. “Your father?” he asked softly. She nodded and then turned to him, her green eyes brimming with tears, which she abruptly brushed away’
49. ‘It’s an alloy: Salamandrium. It’s impenetrable’
50. ‘“I took the liberty of pouring a couple of shoes full of seawater into your fuel tank out there,” the Doctor added with a cheeky grin. “But don’t worry. Bruce won’t take long to find you”’
51. ‘Benik’s security forces were silently taking up positions all round the building which, apart from Kent’s office, was still empty for the New Year holiday’
52. Moved on in May 1974, either because he ‘moved to Thomas Nelson as Editorial Director of their Children's Books division’ (David J Howe, The Target Book; p.27) or because he ‘moved to Blackie [& Son Ltd] from Target’ (David J Howe, The Target Book; p.15), where he got Dicks some work (Terrance Dicks in his foreword to David J Howe, The Target Book; p.9)
53. Moved on at the end of 1979 (‘After she left W H Allen, Brenda Gardner joined E J Arnold, a Leeds-based educational publisher, to set up a trade list for them’ (David J Howe, The Target Book; p.57)), and later ‘set up her own publishing company, Piccadilly Press’ (Terrance Dicks in his foreword to David J Howe, The Target Book; p.9), a brief glimpse of the importance of which can be found on The Bookseller (thebookseller.com/news/gardner-steps-down-piccadilly)
54. Michael Glover moved on in early 1976 (David J Howe, The Target Book; p.37): ‘It's not surprising he didn't stay very long as he was always destined for greater things’
Elizabeth Godfray interviewed in David J Howe, The Target Book; p.28
55. ‘Editors, particularly Who editors, seem to have short life-spans - in the job, that is. They move on’
Terrance Dicks in his foreword to David J Howe, The Target Book; p.9
56. ‘As well as writing the books, 38-year-old Dicks ended up working as a kind of unofficial editor to the range. He would choose the titles to be done and have first option on writing them. To reduce his workload, he recruited other contributors from amongst the original scriptwriters he was working with at the BBC’
David J Howe, The Target Book; p.19
57. ‘new titles for each year were- suggested and initially administered by Terrance Dicks’
David J Howe, The Target Book; p.39
58. ‘Once Elizabeth Godfray left W H Allen at the start of 1977, no replacement editor for the Target list was appointed until May 1978, when Brenda Gardner joined’
David J Howe, The Target Book; p.39
59. On Brenda Gardner’s redundancy in September 1979: ‘What they did was to cut the children's department right back and move the Doctor Who list to be under the responsibility of the adult editor’ (Brenda Gardner interviewed in David J Howe, The Target Book; p.57). PLUS ‘With the departure of Brenda Gardner at the end of 1979, a new editor was eventually appointed to the range in the person of Christine Donougher’ (David J Howe, The Target Book; p.58)
60. Christine Donougher moves on in 1984: ‘Christine Donougher, the range editor, eventually decided that she wanted to move on from Doctor Who - a subject that reportedly was never one of her favourites’ (David J Howe, The Target Book; p.81). PLUS ‘I don't think it's a secret that she couldn't stand working as Doctor Who editor. She didn't have much time for the books, she didn't have much time for the fans, and she was looking for a way out’
Nigel Robinson interviewed in David J Howe, The Target Book; p.81
61. godine.com/book-author/christine-donougher AND dedalusbooks.com/our-authors-and-translators-details.php?id=00000076&fr=r
62. ‘The result of this action was that in 1981 only four new Doctor Who titles were published’
David J Howe, The Target Book; p.68
63. ‘I was doing a lot of books, and the Guild got in touch with me and said that they wanted me to take part in a strike’
Terrance Dicks interviewed in David J Howe, The Target Book; p.67
64. ‘what made W H Allen? It was Doctor Who’
Bob Tanner interviewed in David J Howe, The Target Book; p.63
65. ‘I suggested putting the price up, but the Marketing Director said that if we put the price up, we'd not sell any copies. But I insisted, and when the price went up, it made no difference to sales. I realised that we were onto something potentially big here’
Bob Tanner interviewed in David J Howe, The Target Book; p.63
66. ‘It was a real moneyspinner, and yet it was regarded as something that was always there and that was always going to be making money. So they just let it carry on making money without giving it any thought or direction’
Nigel Robinson interviewed in David J Howe, The Target Book; pp.82-3
Miscellania
‘There was no sign of life’ EXCEPT ‘the zigzagging swarms of huge sandflies buzzing angrily over the sparkling sand’ – why is ‘life’ such a difficult concept for Who?
Apparently Troughton’s Doctor wears a ‘black velvet jacket’
‘The sound of the hovercar reached a climax and then moaned into silence as the vehicle came to rest outside’ – been a while since we had a double entendre of that quality
‘Benik arrived. He was shorter than Bruce, with a thin body and a face like the front of a skull’ – maybe it’s his skin that’s thin?
‘The Doctor looked aghast. “You mean... work?”’ – Marter’s got his number
Griffin: ‘a leathery-faced, shrivelled little man dressed in a rather overelaborate chef’s outfit’ – is the suggestion that Salamander insists on the overelaboracy? I can’t imagine Griffin choosing such an outfit
Jamie gets very un-Jamie once he’s sent on his mission, positively brooding: ‘Jamie said nothing. He was preoccupied, running over in his mind the details of a daring and dangerous plan in which he would soon be risking his life’
Mind you, Victoria’s a bit off even before she gets a whiff of undercover action: ‘Jamie charged like a young bull and butted Rod in the stomach, catching the top-heavy muscleman off balance and sending him crashing against an exposed rock, which he hit with the side of his head. Rod lay quite still. “Bull’s-eye, Jamie!” Victoria cheered’ – oddly cheery reaction to a man’s death
Either a sign of the times or of my advanced age, but I didn’t even notice the notorious ‘That bastard Kent’s got his filthy hands on the Leader’ as I was reading and had to go looking for it afterwards. Wonderfully, it’s immediately followed by the rather more colourful but significantly less how-people-actually-speak ‘You incompetent gorilla!’