Doctor Who: The Maze of Doom

David Solomons's Doctor Who: The Maze of Doom is a fast, funny adventure for 11 year olds that starts with a bull-headed monster walking out of a crashed spaceship.

What happens

The opening is set on Crete, thousands of years ago. A boy called Icarus watches a skyship fall into the sea. Something with the head of a bull climbs out of it, and his father Daedalus wants to study everything inside.

Then we jump to the TARDIS. Ryan finds a ticking paper bag in the pocket of an old coat (the one hanging next to a very long stripy scarf). Inside is a stone with tiny gears in it. The Doctor plugs it into the console and it explodes.

Out in the open, that blast would have flattened a city. And its signal leads them to another one, sitting under a sheet at a very posh auction in London.

So the Doctor does the obvious thing and bids four million pounds for it. Her cheque is written on psychic paper.

What follows is proper Doctor Who. Graham takes over a number thirteen bus with a secret drivers' emergency code, and buses all over London block the traffic for him. There's a mansion full of missing paintings, a museum in the basement and a very cross young woman called Penelope who wants to know what they're doing in her house.

Solomons really gets the team. The Doctor is scatty and brilliant and wears a knitted chicken hat. Yaz daydreams about starring in her own cop show. Ryan is rocking a purple dinner suit, and Graham tells him he looks like an aubergine. If your reader watches the show, they'll probably hear the actors saying every line.

There are little treats for longtime fans too, with old companions and past lives tucked in along the way. You don't need to know any of them to enjoy the story, though.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

In the prologue a soldier is turned to ash by a beam from the creature's horns, and later a man is found dead at the foot of a statue with a broken neck. Neither moment lingers, but a sensitive reader might be caught off guard. For fans of the show, it's the kind of scary they're used to.

What to read next

If they want more of this TARDIS team, try Doctor Who: The Secret in Vault 13, by the same author. It opens with a giant robot hunting the Doctor and her friends across an alien planet.