Mean Streets
is a breath of fresh air after Ghost Devices. Terrance Dicks as a writer can be summed up
as incredibly readable; his prose isn’t particularly special, the style doesn’t
stand out in a line up of some of the greats, but it is one that gets the point
across quick enough for whatever effect Dicks is going for. Mean Streets is Dicks’ homage to noir
style detective stories, the title coming from an already cliché about private
eyes travelling mean streets full of criminals.
There’s a noir detective who splits the perspective with Benny in the
form of Garshak, the intelligent Ogron from Shakedown, and the plot
involving a series of grisly murders on Megacity. The perpetrators are seemingly Wolverines, an
alien animal like gang with several descriptions of red eyes associated with a
mysterious drug on the street. Meanwhile
Bernice Summerfield has been chased off Dellah and charged with fraud in the
company of “murderer” Chris Cwej, leading them both to Megacity to find a way
to clear their names while Irving Braxiatel behind the scenes on Dellah attempts
to stall the authorities finding them.
This plot is two pronged, but simple with both parties essentially looking
for the same thing and eventually intersecting.
Benny and Chirs are looking for a mysterious Project and Garshak is trying
to discover what has been causing these murders (and attempted murders). The simplicity of the plot is also a hallmark
of what makes Terrance Dicks stories work, they aren’t trying to be universe spanning
and the stakes are personal to Benny, Chris, and the people of Megacity (through
the eyes of Garshak) which immediately hits the reader.
Chris and Benny also have amazing chemistry, with
Dicks using the prologue to recount an unseen adventure where Chris and Roz
were on Megacity. This was already a
pleasant surprise, does a really good job of setting up the novel (and the
eventual reveal), and actually felt integrated between the Doctor Who
New Adventures and the Bernice Summerfield New Adventures without having
to file serial numbers off a Seventh Doctor appearance. Terrance Dicks clearly understands how to
characterize Chris, including his growth from his time with the Doctor without
losing the brightness to his personality.
Chris is one of those Doctor Who companions that fits the
archetype of a himbo without making him too dumb, he’s the one to initiate the
plot with Benny after all and the one who eventually puts things together. It’s also a really nice parallel to his
relationship with Jason Kane in Deadfall that despite Benny and Jason’s
messy divorce and that whole situation, there’s no side for Chris to take. He cares about both of them and would trust
Benny with his life because of their mutual experience. With the two of them Benny is the one whose
point of view is prominent, so everything of Chris outside of the prologue is
seen through her eyes. Benny is also put
in the position of private investigator, putting many of the bigger plot points
together and not looking at things from a surface level. For instance there’s a character called Lucifer,
a demonic alien mobster from a planet which has appropriated Christian theology
into their culture for power, who is immediately a red herring of the culprit,
but that is a very red red herring as he is immediately attacked after Benny
negotiates a semi-working relationship that Chris strengthens by saving him.
Megacity is a setting which feels alive, Lucifer has
his own operations and while Dicks does homage The Godfather occasionally
because who wouldn’t in this situation, its gangs feel alive. The prologue establishes what it was which
Dicks uses as a springboard to have evolved and fallen apart with Garshak
losing his position of chief of police along with his Ogron comrades who have
left policing together and moved into security, often at nightclubs. Garshak is the fascinating Ogron because of
his intelligence yet his perspective isn’t just a human with silly Star Trek
head bumps. Dicks makes an important
distinction in his point of view chapters, being in first person while Benny’s
are in third person, and a slight stylistic shift makes things feel off from
the normal human perspective. It also
helps that Garshak doesn’t enter the novel until about one third of the way
through the book: he is spoken of quite a bit along with people who knew him
which builds him up as an unknown entity.
It’s played with that he could be a threat for Benny and Chris, which is
easily sold because he is an Ogron and the cover casts him in shadows. The subversion of course comes and that makes
their eventual team up all the more interesting. Garshak actually cares about the people of
the city, it’s why he went to become a private detective.
Overall, Mean Streets is a triumph for the New
Adventures, with Terrance Dicks writing one of his best Doctor Who stories
all without including the Doctor. A
friend of mine remarked only he would be able to get away with using the word
Dalek, and that’s somehow an apt description for the book. Brilliantly steeping itself in Doctor Who
and that fictional universe while telling its own story with its own small cast
of characters wrapped up in an homage to film noir. Endlessly readable and one I will be coming
back to. 10/10.
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