books guide
asylum
bbc books #087
Written by: Peter Darvill-Evans
Publication Date: 7 May 2001
ISBN: 0 563 53833 3
Pages: 254
Main Characters: The Fourth Doctor and Nyssa
Setting: between The Deadly Assassin and The Face of Evil; for Nyssa, after Terminus
back cover blurb
'My view,' said the Doctor, 'is that you can run - in fact it's often by far the best option - but you can't hide. I'll see myself out.'
Nyssa felt a pang of disappointment. He had gone. She would probably never see him again.
The town of Oxford in AD 1278 seems a haven of tranquillity. Under the summer sun, merchants, students and clerics go about their daily, unhurried tasks. Alfric, the proctor of the Franciscan friary, has only two minor problems: one of the friars has gone missing, and there's a travelling showman, calling himself the Doctor, with a pretty young noblewoman by his side, attracting crowds in the narrow streets.
When the missing friar is found dead, the Doctor is convinced he has been murdered. There is a ruthless killer at large, and Alfric reluctantly teams up with the Doctor to track him down. Their investigation leads towards the most celebrated of the Franciscan brotherhood: Roger Bacon, famed throughout Christendom as a scholar - and, in the far future, the subject of a revolutionary thesis by technographer Nyssa of Traken.