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Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng Chiang (Doctor Who, Bk 61)
Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng Chiang - Doctor Who, Bk 61 Author:Terrance Dicks The Doctor and his companion Leela arrive in fogbound London as tourists, intending to take in a show at the Palace Theater, but wind up instead tracking down a serial killer who's connected to a mysteriously powerful Chinese magician, Li H'sen Chang, and his sinister ventriloquist's dummy Mr. Sin. Assisting them are a couple of affa... more »bly naive Victorian gentlemen, the raffish theater owner Henry Gordon Jago and the serious but soft-spoken coroner Dr. Litefoot. The killer is pretending to be Weng-Chiang, the so-called "Chinese god of abundance," and his powers seem to include the ability to create gigantic carnivorous rats, to grant Chang the ability to hypnotize people, and to give Mr. Sin the ability to move and think on his own. But these are all tricks: The killer is not Weng-Chiang but a fugitive Icelandic war criminal from the far future named Magnus Greel, whose escape in an experimental time machine left him horrifyingly disfigured and in constant need of fresh victims to replenish his failing DNA. Greel is only pretending to be Chinese because he happened to land there when he fled from his own time, a masquerade that is kept up largely as a means of ensuring the loyalty of Li H'Sen Chang, who worships him as a deity come to Earth. Greel and Chang are in London in search of his missing time machine, which turns out to be (in a bit of slightly undercooked narrative convenience) a family heirloom of Litefoot's. And it's become dangerously unstable, so if Greel does find it and try to use it, he might blow up most of London.« less