The Indestructible Man

Review: Gripping thriller and puppet parody?

Remarkable, nasty and cruel, this book isn't what you think it is. Don't expect a campy tribute to Gerry Anderson, for Simon Messingham has thrown the puppet master's creations into a dystopia where fighting off all those weird menaces with Skybases and Really Cool Rockets has left the world bankrupt and dying.

Don't fall in love with any sympathetic characters you meet in this book, as they're unlikely to make it to the next page. A lot of horrible things happen to people, and all for rather artful reasons.

Messingham has managed to weave in very clever parodies of everything Gerry Anderson ever did, from Captain Scarlet through to Thunderbirds (just wait till you find out what he's renamed the Tracy brothers). He's thrown together overcomplicated technology, baffling acronyms and superinvolved flying machines and then asked himself – what if all this wonderfully ambitious, optimistic stuff went horribly wrong?

For every sly reimagining of an Anderson property (BBC TV Centre folds away to become a secret base and rocket launcher) there's a really disturbing thing about to happening to someone.

As an almost pitch-perfect Second Doctor wanders through the devastation, he seems awfully out of place, with Messingham niftily adjusting all those familiar character traits to try and cope with the terrors he's exposed to. And, if you think what the Second Doctor suffers through is unpleasant, just wait till you see what happens to Jamie and Zoeå

You may well not love this book, but you'll definitely be drawn in by an original take on two giants of Sixties television. Although, I bet Robert The Robot is spinning in his grave right now.