The back cover of this book talks about WW2, a deadly conspiracy and a historical mystery: what it neglects to mention is that the conspiracy relates to the death of Hitler. I have no wish to read about this sort of thing and would not have picked up this book had I known. Out it goes. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2524784.html

uniting the Sixth Doctor and the Brigadier in investigating the true facts of alien involvement in the death of Adolf Hitler. It's generally well-researched, but there is a little bit of a sense of historical box-ticking, and a particularly egregious fridging at the end. ( )

The dedication and author’s note will give the alert reader a hint as to why The Shadow In The Glass even exists – it’s a child of circumstance, a last minute replacement to fill a sudden gap in the ravenous two book per month schedule Doctor Who books were on. Essentially it doesn’t exist out of a burning desire to tell a story but to keep the schedule churning over.

Given those circumstances it’s more successful than it has any right to be. It’s Doctor Who does The Boys From Brazil, with all sorts of time travelling shenanigans. Cole and Richards, old hands by this point, keep enough fresh elements and plot twists coming to ensure the reader doesn’t notice the novel’s rushed genesis. It’s also fun to see the Brigadier encounter the one Doctor to that point that he’d never met onscreen, even if their roles in the plot are fairly generic. The big twist at the end’s somewhat contrived but (literally) well executed. It doesn’t dazzle with originality but as an energetic adventure it’s a good baseline for a Doctor Who novel. ( )