The novel “Peacemaker” by James Swallow was published for the first time in 2007.
Two guys on horseback reach a normal farm in the Far West and demand that the owner tells them where they can find a mysterious healer. When the man refuses to help them and tries to send them away they kill him using energy weapons and resume their search.
Martha Jones would like to see a western movie but the Tenth Doctor takes her to the real old West, in the town of Redwater. Shortly before, many people in the area were ill with smallpox and risked dying, but a passing physician healed them. He looks like one of the many scammers that existed at that time, but his medicine worked, the problem is that the people who got healed have strange dreams.
“Peacemaker” is part of a series of novels connected to the new “Doctor Who” series. They’re targeted to a wide audience by being linear enough to be appreciated even by very young readers but sophisticated enough to interest more mature readers.
The western setting is a rarity in “Doctor Who” but the type of plot is one of the classics, with an alien presence on the Earth that becomes a threat. The Doctor jokes about it too mentioning a small community with unfriendly natives and strange events. Certain elements of the plot are so common as to be present in another of the novels with the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones, although luckily this time they’re developed with various differences and in my opinion better.
To create the setting, James Swallow uses various western clichés because the novels of this series have a limited length so it’s impossible to develop everything in depth but at least some of the characters created for “Peacemaker” have their own defined personality and there’s a science fiction element with the presence of aliens.
At the center of the mystery there’s what might appear to be the classic scammer who sells snake-oil in the Old West but in this case his medicine worked because many people were cured of smallpox in an era when there was no cure for that disease. This healer is sought by two aliens who look like human beings and when the Doctor arrives in the area and discovers what’s happening he starts investigating.
Some characteristics of “Peacemaker” make it, in my opinion, above the average of the novels of this series. These are works that have to comply with certain limits of length but sometimes this seems an excuse for the authors to write dull and superficial stories while in this case James Swallow manages to exploit old West clichés to build a good story in which he put many details that can please “Doctor Who” fans. They include references to other television and literary adventures, which seemed to me more numerous than the average fro these books.
Reproducing well the Doctor and his companions’ characterization is important because for readers being able to hear their voices in their mind while reading is part of the fun. In the case of “Peacemaker” that’s even more important because there’s a plot element connected to Doctor’s personality.
The aliens are rather unsettling and the information James Swallow provides about the Clade, their civilization, stress that feeling. Their actions show that they’re a credible threat and bring out the Doctor’s dark side. The consequence is that in a novel that initially alternates dramatic moments with other light-hearted ones, it tends more and more to drama stressing the sense of tension in the final part.
With a good attention to detail, James Swallow managed to create a strong plot and a good balance among the various narrative elements in a short novel. For these reasons the result is very good and I recommend reading “Peacemaker” to anyone interested in “Doctor Who” novels.
