RATING: 3
I have just finished re-reading Ian Marter's Harry Sullivan's War.

I did this mostly because Justin Richards' two Harry Sullivan novels (System Shock and Millennium Shock) have finally made it to the top of my to-read pile, and I thought it would be a pleasant precursor before plunging into those books.  You see, my memories of this book were pretty vague -- something to do with spies who are after a nerve gas sample was about all I could recall.  Yet, for the most part, those memories were also positive, even fondly so.  I distinctly remember picking it up soon after it originally came out and going through it in pretty much one sitting, coming away somewhat satisfied and hoping for Marter to be so kind enough as to write more adventures starring his alter-ego.  It was, I thought at the time, a far better entry than that other companion novel, Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma -- a work which I continue to despise to this very day.  It was fast-paced, exciting, slightly mysterious, a thoroughly enjoyable quick read.  Or so, that is what my recollections told me.

But alas, having now re-read the book again for the first time in more than a decade, I must confess: it seems that memory distorts.

Perhaps it is because that since then I have read uncounted volumes of Clancy, LeCarre, Fleming, and others.  Perhaps, too, it is because the novelty of having an original Doctor Who novel not based on a TV story has long since worn off.  Or maybe it is just because I've matured over the years.  But whatever the reason, my sole reaction to reading this book once again was an appalled "Egad, what was I thinking?!", followed by a realization that had this novel been submitted for publication today, it would have been laughed out of the editor's office and never seen the light of day.

What really makes this book grate on me now is the plot.  Fifteen years have not been kind to it, and while a single reading might not have brought faults to mind, a second has made glaringly obvious.  There are numerous plot holes, and more than a few unanswered central questions (Why do the villains start out trying to kill Harry?  Why do they bother to bust him out of prison, and then let him go without watching him?).  Main characters do stupid things for no apparent reason (Why doesn't Harry just report these attacks on him to a superior immediately?); the villains go out of their way to make it easy to be caught (Why do they go to Paris to attend a dinner party when they know their cover has been blown?); no effort is made to explain who the villains represent, just what they want (are they Russian spies?  Freelance intelligence?  Eco-terrorists?).  Action scenes seem to occur less for any plot reason, but more because Marter felt determined to have one every ten pages or so.  And then, to top it all off, what is Harry's number one reaction to having been in danger?  Go home, have a spot of tea, go to sleep, and deal with it some other time.  Harry Sullivan, an imbecile indeed.

Characterization?  Well, Harry is at least a likeable protagonist, even though you have to wonder about his common sense at times.  However the main villain, Alexander Shire, comes off as being something of a drip.  As a master spy (or whatever he is) he is pretty much second-rate, the kind you might expect to find in some cheap, bad, B-movie knock-off of a Bond flick.  His actions make no sense, even when he tries to explain them, and as a consequence he comes off less as the adversary that must be overcome and more as the incompetent wanna-be who spins webs far too wide and cumbersome for him to manage.  The Brigadier and Sarah-Jane both have walk-on parts, mostly because (I suspect) Marter thought the reader would expect them to drop in at some point.  In one of the more annoying aspects of the story, Marter takes some considerable effort to make it seem that the Brigadier might be involved in the shady goings on, but later this whole potential plot line is dismissed almost as an afterthought.

The writing is hackneyed to say the least, a mixture of the grade-school level of the old Target novelizations punctuated by some big words in long, unwieldy paragraphs.  Descriptions are sometimes confusing, often laborious.  Events that one would think are of some significance are merely summarized, while attempts at action sequence come off less like exciting moments in the story and more like the play-by-play commentary by a bored sports announcer.  Then there are all those exclamation points, betraying Marter's roots as a writer (or, in his words, "hack") of basically children's novelizations.  All that can be said for it is that it is not overly cumbersome, and one can pretty much cover the entire book in a single lazy afternoon.

Marter's objective clearly was to emulate the old Ian Fleming James Bond novels, minus the sex.  Unfortunately, he does not bring it off very well.  At the core Marter has a good idea for a story, but the story he tells is just too haphazard to be enjoyable.  I get the feeling that Marter had an  idea as to what he wanted and may even have had a rough map on how to get there, but the points in between were all vague and subject to much improvisation.  One sometimes gets the impression that his entire method of plotting a story was to throw out a few random, disparate elements and hope he could tie it all together at some point toward the end.

Re-reading this book was a real disappointment.  I had entered it thinking it was going to be a pleasant trip back; I came away feeling cheated and appalled.  It is, at least, not quite as bad as the worst Virgin or BBC novel, but it does get close.  And it still beats the hell out of Turlough and the Earthlink Dilema, which is so far the only original Doctor Who novel in existence that I have found to be synonymous with the word "kindling".  All I can say is, I hope the two Justin Richards novels are much, much better.  Marter showed, at the very least, that Harry Sullivan could work as a spy; it's just a damn shame that Marter's attempt to cast him as one was so positively dreadful.
 

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This Review Copyright 2000, Douglas B. Killings.  All rights reserved.