Roz stared out and saw it on the door step.
The white dog.

I see that I gave very high praise to the previous Cartmel novel in the New Adventures series. I was not as convinced by this one; I kept feeling that I had forgotten important bits of continuity, and the plot seemed to be trying to merge high-school supernatural, spy stories and possessed-animal-horror without the same success that Buffy had; while from the Whovian end, the Doctor and companions didn’t really have all that much to do with events. I did develop an interest in the emotional journeys of the main guest character and his son, but was generally a little disappointed.