The Face of the Enemy (Doctor Who)
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| Author | David A. McIntee |
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| Series |
Doctor Who book: Past Doctor Adventures |
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Release number
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7 |
| Subject | Featuring: The Master, UNIT, the Brigadier, Ian, Barbara, Harry |
| Set in | Period between Day of the Daleks and The Sea Devils (concurrent with The Curse of Peladon) |
| Publisher | BBC Books |
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Publication date
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5 January 1998 |
| Pages | 281 |
| ISBN | |
| Preceded by | The Roundheads |
| Followed by | Eye of Heaven |
The Face of the Enemy is a BBC Books original novel written by David A. McIntee and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who.
While the Third Doctor and Jo are away, taking the Doctor's apparently repaired TARDIS on a test flight, UNIT is called in to investigate the crash of an RAF plane which had reported seeing a UFO. The dead body of the still-living MP Frederick Jackson is found aboard, and autopsy reports indicate that the body is that of the genuine Jackson, although his appendectomy scar seems to have vanished. The Brigadier requires a new scientific advisor to help solve the mystery, and as Liz Shaw is away on a lecture tour, he contacts the RAE and is put in touch with Ian Chesterton and his wife Barbara. Ian soon determines that the crashed aircraft is mildly radioactive, indicating that it has recently been somewhere other than the Earth, but before he can investigate further, the Minister without Portfolio Carswell arrives and demands that the plane be disposed of to prevent radioactive contamination of the countryside. Against orders, Mike Yates removes a fragment of the wreckage for Ian to examine later.
The Magnum Bank is raided by robbers armed with AK-47s, and when DI George Boucher and his nephew and partner Rob Thorpe enter the bank without waiting for backup, Thorpe is gunned down by the escaping robbers. Boucher is left to agonise over how to tell his sister about her son's death, and only feels worse when he is taken off the case due to his personal involvement. The robbers targeted specific safety-deposit boxes owned by the criminal mastermind Victor Magister, who prefers to be known as "the Master", and he orders his criminal lawyer Ross Grant to investigate and teach the perpetrators a lesson. Grant has Joseph Barron question an informant and learns that the raid was apparently planned by the "69 Krew", a Scottish criminal syndicate. He therefore leads a team of heavies to teach the Krew a lesson, but realizes too late that Barron has led him into a trap; the thugs from the Master's gang are all killed, while Grant is taken prisoner and tortured by the Master's accountant, Marianne Kyle.
Barbara, seeking something constructive to do, goes to interview Jackson to determine whether he is the real thing, only to find that he has been murdered. Boucher is assigned to the case, and the Brigadier, unable to fill him on the full details for reasons of security, asks Barbara to help Boucher in case he should find something relevant. Barbara learns that Jackson's replacement is hiring new people to fill positions amongst his staff—and that the ads were placed a week ago, long before Jackson was killed. Boucher and Barbara research recent missing persons reports, and discover that a number of prominent politicians have recently vanished and then reappeared within a few days—and that one of them was Carswell, the man who tried to have the suspicious plane destroyed. The Brigadier assigns Lieutenant Beresford to keep Carswell under surveillance, and Beresford soon spots Carswell meeting with Joseph Barron, arranging for more of Kyle's people to be "brought over"; Carswell also meets with a group of men who are later traced to the Royal Navy's submarine base at Faslane.
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