The English Way of Death by: Gareth Roberts: How Vulgar! Nobody Does Anything of Importance On A Tuesday

Gareth Roberts has a record in the Virgin New Adventures that is very hit or miss overall.  The Romance of Crime and The Highest Science are both pretty good, but Tragedy Day and Zamper are both bad novels.  The Romance of Crime is interesting as it is set in the middle of Season 17 and fits that tone perfectly.  It is not a perfect story, but it is still a great one and is followed up by an even better one.  Roberts returns to Season 17 with The English Way of Death a novel that is oh so delightfully British.  Set immediately following The Romance of Crime, this novel starts with a prologue that sets up the mystery of the story where Stackhouse, a CEO of a candy company, is on a train to the country because his doctor says he needs rest where he meets the eccentric Percival Closed.  This scene on the train is really good at establishing who Stackhouse is.  We know that while he agrees with his doctor, he is still very stubborn.  It isn’t enough to make you emotionally attached, but it makes his death at the end of the prologue where he is killed and his body taken over by a gaseous entity known as Zodaal actually mean something.  It is a step up from Zamper, which is Roberts’s last published novel.

 

The plot actually involves the Doctor overriding the Randomizer on the TARDIS so he can return some library books in London, 1930, which of course he calls urgent business.  It pops off the page as something Douglas Adams would write as a way to get the Doctor into the plot.  Roberts writes the Doctor perfectly for the era as he has that cocky head with Romana, and like the audience doesn’t actually take the threat of the Black Guardian seriously.  Lalla Ward’s second Romana is also written to perfection as she interacts with a rather sarcastic K9.  These TARDIS scenes are just enough to give us a relationship analogous to the one seen in City of Death.  It is a relationship that holds up through the entire novel and is simply beautiful in hindsight as the story would be chosen to reprint in 2015 and chosen to adapt into an audio, review of that to follow.  The library books actually get the Doctor and Romana to split up as there is time disturbance, but the Doctor just cannot be bothered.  K9 even gets to the action with a lot of snarky attitude to the Doctor which is hilarious.  The immediate thought is that the plot is going to diverge in an A-plot and B-plot, but it really doesn’t as the Doctor and Romana do meet up again soon after.

 

The Doctor of course doesn’t go to the library, but actually goes and gets some tea where he sees an assassin working for Stackhouse, Julia Orlostro, kidnapping a seismologist called Porteous which prompts him to get K9, and eventually run into Percy Closed who is the leader of a group of aliens trying to live the rest of their lives on Earth.  The Doctor knows something is wrong, and sends Romana and Colonel Radlett, a man she met up with to deal with closing the portal while he and Percy play bridge next door with Closed’s new neighbor, mystery novelist Felicia Chater.  The plot to this point is already pretty complicated, yet doesn’t feel forced at all.  All these characters and more are introduced very quickly and they all make an impression.  The Doctor is eventually forced to take action when Percy is captured and the plot becomes rescue Percy and try to defeat Zodaal/Stackhouse.  The twist is that Stackhouse is only possessed by half of Zodaal which Romana discovers when forced through the portal by a zombie.  Oh yes this story has Zodaal creating zombies to do his bidding which is this dark concept as there are descriptions of decomposing flesh that makes your skin crawl.  Roberts is great at writing the zombies in very tense sequences.  Of course good prevails, but while the Doctor would probably force the aliens to leave if this was from an earlier time, he lets them stay on Earth.

 

Let’s talk about these aliens.  From his introduction, Percy Closed is an extremely British character squeezed together with the alien nature of Ford Prefect subtly implemented.  It feels very much like a character that Douglas Adams doing his script editor duties would have written in to the story which is just great.  Closed is a character who gets an arc as he starts being a stick in the mud when it comes to the others as he doesn’t want any sort of alien technology to mess up the timeline of 1930s London and has even prepared to get everyone to the country by World War II.  He loosens up once he falls in love with his neighbor which is hilarious and extremely well developed.  Felicia is just a great character as well as she is suffering from writer’s block and is trying to live on her own.  Her reactions to danger is hilarious which really works for the character.

 

Julia the assassin while a minor character also works really well as she is a message on greed.  She doesn’t take Stackhouse seriously immediately as he is offering a lot of money for some simple assassination and kidnapping jobs.  I also must give a mention to Harriet who is an alien who is used for comic relief and an explanation as to what the aliens are doing.  She’s still a lot of fun to read and is just enjoyable.  Finally the villain is Zodaal who is a gaseous entity who creates zombies and uses extreme deadpan.  It is a great mix of horror and comedy for the story which really works considering the title of the show indicates a large amount of death.

 

To summarize, The English Way of Death is a novel that stirred an emotion in me.  This emotion has not been felt about a Virgin Missing Adventure since Goth Opera.  It is just a novel that keeps everything unnecessary to a minimum.   All the characters, even the minor ones who get a few scenes for the first time in a very long while are memorable and the plot is this brilliant mix of light hearted comedy and dark natured horror.  This is without a doubt Roberts’s best novel yet and I’m hoping the work from him in the future of this range.  I am proud to finally give The English Way of Death 100/100, the second Virgin Missing Adventure to receive this score.