Not yet satisfied by her domination of audio dramas, novels, and collections of short stories, Bernice Summerfield now moves into a new format: the trilogy of novellas. A Life in Pieces is made up of three novellas that interlink to make a complete story.  Given the series's success with the interlinked short story format in Life During Wartime and A Life Worth Living, I was looking forward to this, but I actually ended up being somewhat disappointed.  Nothing is bad, but the book never forms a cohesive whole, either.  It doesn't have to, of course... but I think it might want to.

The first story is by Dave Stone, who I always remember as writing the weird stuff.  That's as true as ever here: Bernice and Jason go on vacation... only it turns out they're secretly on reality television?  There's not so much a plot here as a series of jokes, some of which are funny.  Not all of them, unfortunately, and maybe not even most of them, but there were a couple good ones, and one belter. (When Bernice figures out how to circumvent the reality TV cameras, if you're interested.) As a story, it's kinda there: it wants you to laugh, but you don't want to, so everyone is just standing around awkwardly most of the time.

The next is by Paul Sutton, one of my favorite Big Finish writers, as he's penned Arrangements for War, Thicker Than Water, and No More Lies.  His contribution here is very different from those big, emotional stories, but it's still very character-driven.  It follows Adrian Wall, Bev Tarrant, Irving Braxiatel, a couple cops, and a host of criminals on Earth as everyone tries to get their hands on the Purpura Pawn, a valuable artifact from an alien planet that's recently been stolen... by Jason Kane?  It's a dark, tangled story, but Sutton's knack for character strikes; it's perhaps the most insightful story about Adrian and Bev we've ever had, and there's other good stuff, too, especially with the cop character.  Dark and ominous; I'd call it noir if I knew enough about the genre to feel confident enough to make such an assessment.

Finally, there comes a story by Joseph Lidster about Jason's trial for stealing the Purpura Pawn.  It's the flipside of the events in Sutton's tale, told as a series of reconstructed documents a couple generations later. It's an interesting idea, and I like the narrator of the piece, a very likable and driven fellow who is completely and utterly wrong. The thing is, I think I'd prefer to get into Bernice and especially Jason's heads more than the format allows.  Intellectually admirable, and with some good stuff to say about how we try to uncover truth, but it left me kinda cold in the end.

The three stories are all decent at least, but the book feels lopsided. Stone's story is so goofy compared to the other two dark ones, and its tale is completely irrelevant to the later ones, making it feel like it doesn't even belong in the same book.  I like the idea of the book, and I liked the book itself more than I didn't, but I feel like it could have been done better.

Zardox Break by Dave Stone

When the Doctor Who New Adventures were being published, I followed the series so obsessively that I knew the publication dates and just happened to pop by Forbidden Planet every day for about a week before a new one was brought out on the off-chance that they might have it on the shelves early. What a thrill it was to get hold of a copy several days before it was due! And a new Dave Stone novel transformed the thrill into a roulette-esque game of chance as the novel would assuredly be either a masterpiece likely to challenge my preconceptions about what a Doctor Who novel could be, or, frankly, a steaming pile of poo. Or possibly both. And not because I had some preconception that a Doctor Who novel couldn't be a steaming pile of poo, either. Dave's novels were often quite barmy, and perfectly suited the boggle-eyed extremities of the seventh Doctor's on-screen persona but they could also be infuriating, Dave The Author hanging over the narrative like some smugly arrogant deity, with one hand sensitively portraying the characters as real, frail, flawed human beings and with the other sneeringly pointing out the real frailties of his flawed, human characters.
Well, forunately two of those characters survive to take part in this particular tale and it's pretty much what you'd expect from Mr Stone. There's about as much plot in this novella as a lesser author would waste on a short story and the rest is filled out with the usual Adams-esque Guide To The Galaxy style meanderings and general thought-provoking musings on the nature of the universe. So, there's nothing to complain about here; it's not up to his finest standards but it certainly doesn't scrape the same barrel-depths as the poorest of his previous works. Not that as a mere reader I could ever be bold enough to judge any of the author's previous works as anything so insulting as "poor". Except "Burning Heart". That was a steaming pile of poo.

The Purpura Pawn by Paul Sutton

My previous encounters with the works of Paul Sutton have been a handful of audio dramas he's written for Big Finish's Doctor Who and Bernice Summerfield ranges and I recall finding them quite enjoyable. From what I can make out, this novella is his longest piece of prose fiction to date and it's pretty solidly written. It's taken it's cue from noir-ish detective fiction with a nice chunk of classic sci-fi dystopian future chucked in. The action takes place between lush hotels, casinos and seedy bars, there are plenty of chases, fist fights and explosions and all-in-all it's just much more of an all-out adventure story than the previous novella in this collection. And from that point of view, it's a success. It's pacy and enjoyable and the balance between plot and description is pitched just right for the novella form.

On Trial by Joseph Lidster

Again, most of my contact with this author's work has been from Big Finish audio dramas but that seems about to change since he's begun writing for the Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures TV shows. Hopefully, for his sake, he'll begin to branch out from writing Doctor Who spin-off material before his TV writing career gets much further!
On Trial kind of ties up the ongoing story from the other two novellas in the book, although it asks as many questions as it answers. Little hints here and there seem to build up and intertwine, to refer back to previous stories and set things in motion for the future. The tale is rather cleverly written from the perspective of an investigator looking back at the events from a historical point of view. What makes it more interesting is that the writer clearly doesn't believe what he is being asked to report and the whole story is tainted with his own political perspective. The writing style works pretty well with only the odd quibble from me - I got pretty tired of the typically wacky sci-fi conceit of spelling ordinary names in an unexpected way to make the society seem more alien; Kristoffa, Marck, Roja etc. Not convinced. The slow reveal of facts works pretty well though and the end result is that this novella ties up the events of this particular collection nicely, if not the overall storyline. ( )