Mission: Impractical

As you can see from the poorly photoshopped screen captures on the cover, this novel brings back Sabalom Glitz, the lovable space rogue from The Trial of a Time Lord. It also brings back his bumbling assistant Dibber and features the sixth Doctor with his classic companion Frobisher, the shapeshifting penguin. And they all have to stage a heist together! (Also: the Ogrons are in it for some reason.) How could this not be fun? McIntee's sixth Doctor, Glitz, and Dibber are spot on, and the scenes with them are the best parts of the book. His Frobisher is decent but strangely underused. Unfortunately, the rest of the novel's supporting characters don't exactly set the world alight-- and I have a hard time buying anyone could be romantically interested in Glitz! The best part of the novel is the heist itself, but it takes over half the book to get there, and the aftermath of the heist failed to engage me at all. Fun, but it could have been stronger.