The Clockwise Man

by Justin Richards

Book Overview

In 1920s London the Doctor and Rose find themselves caught up in the hunt for a mysterious murderer. But not everyone or everything is what they seem. Secrets lie behind locked doors and inhuman killers roam the streets.

Who is the Painted Lady and why is she so interested in the Doctor? How can a cat return from the dead? Can anyone be trusted to tell or even to know the truth?

With the faceless killers closing in, the Doctor and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1849905444
• ISBN13: 9781849905442
• Release Date: May 2012
• Publisher: BBC Books
• Length: 253 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 4.3" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

The Clockwise Man - Fun to read!

I loved this book! It was fun to read and took up some time. I read the book on the train to work, in bed before going to sleep and really when ever I could find time to read. It drew me in and I loved it! Great plot and interesting villans and friends. Also a lot of twists and turns!!

An Earthly Child

-Justin Richards could write a book with his eyes closed. -Justin Richards could write a book without using a typewriter, word processor, or dictaphone. -Justin Richards could write a book even had he lived in the caves at Lascaux and could only use pictograms. That's how easy Justin Richards makes it seem. "The Clockwise Man" is an intricate puzzle-box of a novel, and yet still gives off the sense that the author wrote it in a couple of weeks in his spare time while doing other, more elaborate things. This was the first novel in the 9th Doctor series. Representing a change for "Doctor Who" original fiction after 15 years of edgy cheaply-made paperbacks aimed at the narrowest niche of fandom, the new series is made of shorter novels that don't quite capture the intensity of the first season of "Doctor Who", Russell T. Davies style. Well, at least the cover illustrations aren't embarrassingly bad. Justin Richards, who's been writing interesting "Who" books for a decade, fires the opening gun in the 9th Doctor range -- set, as "Doctor Who" always did best, in a gaslit early 20th century, in parlors and dark alleys and museums. The novel opens with a knowing tug at the first "Doctor Who" TV episode, as the TARDIS lands in a London junkyard. One of the story's mysteries revolves around a young boy who is not quite who he appears to be. The rest of the plot, in essence, is similar to a forgotten Richards' epic called "Dreams of Empire". A deposed alien dictator is kept prisoner on Earth. The problem is, he is hidden so well (to the characters, if not to the readers) that neither the Doctor, or a futuristic female assassin and her two mechanical helpers, can figure out who he is until it's almost too late. Along the way, Richards lays out a series of puzzles that the characters must solve in order to progress to the next chapter. There's a lot of double dealing, hidden identities, decoy villains, word games, and chess games. For all the intrigue, "Clockwise Man" never takes any risks or thinks outside the box. When the climax begins in a tower that rises 300 feet above central London, you instantly know how the villain will be dispatched. And although Richards cheats badly by writing a moving death scene for a character who's later revealed to have lived, there are very few surprises in terms of who makes it and who doesn't. Secondary characters check out when you expect them to, in the way that you expected. "Clockwise Man" is an extremely competent novel, but in the end it's a bit bloodless. As a print debut for the 9th Doctor, the story lacks the gleeful schizophrenia of "Rose", the TV debut. Not a bad read, but in the end Richards' storytelling is just a shade too narrow and too shallow for the small screen.

The Good and Bad of the New Series

This is, as even the most blind of persons would know, the first novel based upon the new series of Doctor Who. The novel stars the 9th Doctor and his companion, Rose, no huge surprise since their pictures are on the front cover of a really nicely done hardback book (which, as noted by a few others, is so much better than the weaker paperbacks the BBC has given us for the 8th and Past Doctors). I wont go into the story that is found in this book as most likely, if you are already looking at this book, you have either read it and wish to know what other fans of the Doctor has to say about this book, or you'll get it anyway because you are said fan of the Doctor Who series and you like to collect all the knickknacks of Doctor Who. For me, the book was a pleasant read, over all. The characters were the usual set of Doctor Who characters, from the main characters themselves (Doc and Rose) to the supporting cast. The book is not a complicated storyline, as would be found in the 8th Doctor novels and even more so in the Virgin novels so long ago (at least now it seems so long ago). I really liked the story myself, and I think it is worth reading. But yes, there is a big "however" that I am in need of confessing... First off, the BBC published the 9th Doctor's novels here in the States before they brought the new series over here. Thus we read the books before we even got to see the first adventure, Rose, let alone the whole series which was recently played on the Science Fiction Network. At least with the 8th Doctor movie, which I will say I'm a big fan of along with the other 8th Doc's adventures, we got to see the movie first and then stepped into the many adventures awaiting the 8th Doctor. Not so here, for me I feel that it is important to let the fans see the new Doctor (in this case the 9th) and then they understand the motivations and the quirks of the main characters. Thus you really didn't know the 9th Doctor and you just had to pick up pieces here and there through the six novels that star the 9th Doctor. It would have been nice to really know how Chris Eccleston showed himself as the Doctor before reading how the 9th Doctor was like in the six books that star the 9th Doctor. Which leads to the second problem... Apparently, secondly, there will only be said 6 novels of the 9th Doctor at least for a long time being. This is a big problem for me because we the fans do not know much about the history behind the 9th Doctor except for the few snippets we gained through watching the first season (which is a good season and a worthy addition to any Doc Who DVD collection). It would be so nice for the BBC to actually give us novels of how the regeneration between the 8th Doctor and the lead in into the 9th Doctor's adventures... such as the infamous Time Wars...what was this war about? Besides between the Time Lords and the Daleks. How did it start and what really happened at the conclusion? What were some of the adventures that

A good start to the Ninth Doctor Adventures

When I learned that BBC Books was going to release a range of novels to tie in with the new serial of Doctor Who (a smash hit in the UK, yet to be seen on my side of the pond, in the United States) I was extremely dubious. I've been a Doctor Who fan for most of my adolescent/adult life, and in all that time I've purchased only a handful of books that have to do with the series, most of those being either non-fiction (Jon Pertwee's biography, Blacklight, etc) or they were Missing Adventures. I've owned two books in the range of New Adventures - Nightshade (which I enjoyed) and Happy Endings (which I still have yet to wade through.) This is mostly due to the fact that, by the time I realized there was a line of books, I was so far behind that I didn't understand anything that was going on. Thankfully, the first novel in the Ninth Doctor Adventures, The Clockwise Man, is set within the confines of the new series (between World War III and Dalek) and does not rely upon the past doctor novels to keep afloat. This is a good thing, because relying on past events is what halted my reading both Happy Endings and The Ancestor Cell. The story behind the Clockwise Man is fairly simple - the Doctor and Rose arrive in 1924, their plan to visit the British Empire Exhibition. However, as soon as they exit the TARDIS they are sucked into an event that will lead them through a series of mini-mysteries, in search of a mysterious killer and those who would pilfer a police box and leather jacket. My feeling had always been that the range should have opened perhaps with a preface - a novel to set up how the Doctor went from his Eighth incarnation to his Ninth. Upon further consideration, I'm glad they didn't do this (and as of writing this, am still unsure of whether or not the Eighth Doctor Adventures have approached a regeneration) because it would have been taking a step back, and if Russell T Davis has tried to do anything with the new franchise, it's not take steps back. So this adventure is, as stated above, set between World War III and Dalek. I quite like the idea of getting to know the characters a little bit better, to see their relationship fleshed out in a way that a 13 episode series probably can't accomplish without a whole lot of boring tip-toeing. Having said that, I come to my one problem with the novel - the lack of deeper character insight. We get a few nice tidbits in the novel where we're allowed to know what the Doctor or Rose are thinking, thoughts left unspoken on screen. The downside is that there are precious few of these, and in the end the novel feels very light-weight due to this. At the same time, I don't see how this novel would be marketed toward children or even young teenagers. It is quite slow in the beginning and the underlying political issues don't seem like the type of thing that would snag an eight year old's interest. Despite this, I think that Justin Richards has written a novel that, at least, captured my attention

I'd LOVE to read it!!!!

I would LOVE to read this book......IF ANYONE IN THE U.S. WOULD CARRY IT!!!!!!What does Borders and other U.S. stores have against these books? Import them from England please!!