First of all, a bit of
background. When I wrote my first Who book, The Highest
Science, in 1992, the New Adventures had only just started, so
nobody - least of all me - knew quite what the books were
supposed to be. After a couple of years, Paul Cornell, Kate
Orman and Andy Lane had set the tone - and I stuck out like a
sore thumb.
I really admired Cornell's breadth of vision, but I knew if
I tried to do something like that I'd fall flat on my face. I
think I'm more of an entertainer than an artist; everything
I've done has a kind of 'roll up, roll up' quality to it.
Doctor Who is an adventure serial with fantasy elements; I
never saw it as science fiction, so I modelled the tone of my
stuff on the sort of funny, rollicking whodunnits by writers
like John Dickson Carr, Edmund Crispin and Pamela Branch. All
three tragically out of print in this country! (If you come
across a copy of Crispin's The Moving Toyshop, snap it up.
It's more like Doctor Who than Doctor Who.)
