The Death of Art (novel)

Publisher's Summary
'''He did not know if his powers could save him until the horses' hooves had crushed his ribs and his heart had stopped beating. After that, it was obvious.'''

1880's France: the corrupt world of the Third Republic. A clandestine brotherhood is engaged in a desperate internal power struggle; a race of beings seeks to free itself from perpetual oppression; and a rip in time threatens an entire city. The future of Europe is at stake, in a war fought with minds and bodies altered to the limits of human evolution.

Chris finds himself working undercover with a suspicious French gendarme; Roz follows a psychic artist whose talents are attracting the attention of mysterious forces; and the Doctor befriends a shape-shifting member of a terrifying family. And, at the heart of it all, a dark and disturbing injustice is being perpetrated. Only an end to the secret war, and the salvation of an entire race, can prevent Paris from being utterly destroyed.

Characters

 * The Doctor
 * The Doctor is worried that he has very few harmless and peaceful memories.


 * Roz Forrester
 * Practices archery.


 * Chris Cwej
 * Doesn't know a lot about cricket.
 * Pretends to be the Fifth Doctor, not very successfully, following the events of MA: Cold Fusion.

Continuity

 * The Doctor installs a copy of a cathedral into the TARDIS for future use - presumably this is the origin of the console room used in DW: Doctor Who.
 * This novel is based around the historical events of the Dreyfus Affair.
 * The novel makes references to the disappearance of the author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid - i.e. Professor James Moriarty, last seen falling off a cliff in Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story The Final Problem.
 * The novel makes reference to the events of The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe.
 * Anton Jarre recalls meeting a Belgian police sergeant who is clearly intended to be a young Hercule Poirot, the detective created by Agatha Christie.