| BLOOD HARVEST by Terrance Dicks |
| Story 28 Synopsis: Chicago, 1929. Gumshoe Tom Dekker is hired by Al Capone to check out a new joint called Doc's Place. There, he meets the owner, Doc, and his moll, Ace. The beer is excellent, the cops are paid off and Doc seems to want to stay neutral. On a barren, remote planet, Bernice is excavating, and checks out a spooky old Tower. She has an encounter with a vampire, and a mysterious haughty woman. She warns the villagers, who come to check it out, but find no evidence, and are themselves accused of murder. Bernice realises she's being discredited, so goes to check again. Back in Chicago, Doc and Ace meet Al Capone, and are nearly massacred. Doc persuades Capone to get all the mobsters together to call a truce, so he can find who would try to make it fail. The truce holds until three men are murdered, with Capone in the frame as chief suspect. Doc checks Capone was innocent, then sets to work. Back on the other planet, Bernice is nabbed by a strange gang, and interrogated. When she is forced to admit connection to the Doctor, she is released, they being friends of his. The haughty woman introduces herself as Romana. A conference is called between the Lords and villagers over who should rule. Bernice proposes a combined government. But then the leading Lord is beheaded in his room, and Bernice and Romana realise one of the villagers, Tarak, has been framed. Back at the secret base of the rebels, they find a similar situation with the Lords seeming to be framed. In Chicago, Ace's investigations are curtailed when she is kidnapped. Doc and Dekker manage to save her. Capone is tricked into thinking Doc is his enemy, but Doc manages to lure out his real enemy: Agonal, a powerful being manipulating events for his own sick ends. But the creature is Timescooped away. Back on the planet, the Lords and the villagers attack each other, and are then attacked by vampires. The survivors band together. Bernice and Romana are saved from attack by Lord Sargon, and invited to his castle. But Bernice realises he's not as pure as he claims, and is behind the resurgence of vampires. Trapped, she calls the Doctor for help. Doc, Ace and Dekker take the TARDIS to the planet, where the Doctor rounds up the surviving Lords and villagers into an attack on Sargon's castle. They manage to free Bernice and Romana, but Dekker is stabbed by a vampire. Sargon's experiment to revive the Great Vampire fails when the creature is exposed to the sun. The Doctor, Ace, Bernice and Romana take the injured Dekker in the TARDIS to Gallifrey, where Dekker is sent for treatment. The Doctor is taken away, and the others locked up. Ace breaks them out, warning Lady President Flavia that trouble is afoot. The Doctor is interrogated by the Committee of Three, who bear him a grudge, but he is released by Castellan Spandrell. The Committee have brought Agonal to the Tomb of Rassilon, with a Time Gun, so that the creature can fight Rassilon, and they can release Borusa. The Doctor is unable to prevent their success, but Borusa rejects their help. Agonal is defeated, and the Committee arrested. Romana stays on Gallifrey. Dekker is cured, and taken home. But on Earth, they also find a surviving vampire Lord - but the Doctor says he already sorted him out. |
| Review:- An elder statesman returns to his craft for a tale combining trouble in two distinctive societies, and a shady masterplan with a high prize on offer... Not only is this a surprising if tangential sequel to State Of Decay, but it's also an opportunity for a character study of a famous period in history, namely Capone's Chicago, allowing for the chance to meet and greet some more notable names, even if Eliot Ness is just 'noises off'. Casting the Doctor in the role of club owner makes for an amusing change, although it shows the character has changed from where he used to be. Now, he's content that the ends justify the means, and if catching Agonal involves shady back-handers to the cops and mixing with gangsters, then so be it. Even Ace doesn't seem to much care. Bernice, meanwhile, is dumped on the vampire planet without any warning, which is rather gormless of the Doctor. She has to make a pretend role for herself, until she eventually admits the Doctor sent her, at which point things pick up, and she meets Romana, making her first appearance since Warriors' Gate. In a sense, her eventual return to Gallifrey is the whole point of the book, although admittedly the need to set up concurrently-released Goth Opera is also prevalent. Whilst Chicago is a well-portrayed locale, it's hardly germane to the main notion of catching Agonal, and it's hardly luck that the city is the first big location to get left behind. The brief silliness on the vampire planet where the Doctor rushes to Bernice's aid merely leads to the need to visit Gallifrey. Dekker's hospitalisation just takes him out of the action where he isn't needed. The Committee of Three seem rather lacklustre baddies, and Agonal foreshadows the later Players of similar power & malevolence. Rassilon turns up, Borusa turns up too, and the climax is rather curt. But there's still time to set up that sequel, when Yarven is revealed to have come to Earth in the TARDIS, and Ruath meets Romana. But that's another book... Whilst displaying the typical entertainment he can be relied on for, Dicks perhaps gives his book more elements than it can handle, meaning that some parts are built up for no good reason, and others not built up enough. Whilst his characters are all credible and interesting, the huge parallels between events in Chicago and on the vampire planet leave the reader hungry for the conclusion long before it comes. Good enough, but could and should have been better. |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy of this book. |