The Paternoster Gang: Heritage 2

Quite why this is called “Heritage 2” I'm not at all sure. That makes it sound as if it's a sequel to the previous release Heritage 1, with the two being part of some longer-term plot arc. But it isn't: it's a set of three hour-long stories unconnected with each other and with what went before, at least one of which has nothing at all to do with the concept of “heritage”. The mystery of the title aside, though, it's a fun collection, with an often whimsical tone, with the science fiction elements largely overshadowing the Victorian ones – which may be a plus or a minus, depending on your tastes and expectations.

Dining with Death – The first story sees Madame Vastra hosting a peace conference between two warring, but minor, interstellar powers while someone – or something – tries to sabotage events. There's a good mixture of humour and action, with one of the alien races providing as much of the former as Strax does. Jenny gets some scenes on her own that show off her capabilities as an investigator, although what some of it has to do with the larger plot isn't entirely clear and there are also some good scenes showing Strax actually working as a butler. If it has a weakness, it's that it tends to show the characters as one-note, responding to events in their usual style but nothing more than that. There is a connection with the past of one of them, but it's largely incidental. Nonetheless, it is fun and all the main characters have something to do. 4.5 stars.

The Screaming Ceiling –The second story takes the unusual step of being told from the perspective of a guest character. He's an inexperienced ghost-hunter called in to investigate a haunting in Scotland that the Paternoster Gang are already looking into. Seeing them through his eyes neatly avoids any issues with limited characterisation, especially since he's an unreliable narrator who doesn't quite get what's happening in some of the scenes (Jenny, for example, is straight in this, since he has no reason to assume otherwise). It's more serious than the first story, with something creepy behind the apparent hauntings, but there is still plenty of humour provided both by Strax and the narrator and it's an effective twist on the format that plays on some of the listener's expectations. 4 stars.

Spring-Heeled Jack – This time we're on the trail of a being that looks remarkably like the Spring-Heeled Jack of legend and is abducting random people from the streets of London. As in the previous story, an additional character is added into the mix, in this case a sensationalist newspaper reporter also on the trail of the abductor. While she is an important element of the story, it does highlight the lack of any ongoing theme here – six stories in and there are no recurring characters other than the leads. As a standalone story, though, it works reasonably well, even if the eventual solution seems a bit hard to swallow given what we've seen up to that point. As usual, Strax provides the humour (here, more from his failure to understand Earth culture and biology rather than a desire to blow everything up) and Jenny gets some good characterisation, standing up for the downtrodden when even Vastra is reluctant to. 4 stars.