THIS IS NOT the easiest of TV spin-offs. The Prisoner is a series you don't so much watch as experience. The spectacle and the chaos of it create their own meaning beyond any notion of a conventional storyline, and that's difficult to replicate in prose unless the writer is a pretty audacious stylist.

On that score, Blum and Booth have had a good go with The Prisoner's Dilemma, using creative layouts, varying typefaces and stream-of-consciousness. The novel's four-part structure borrows from contemporary TV, in that each part has its own plot but there's an overall story regarding Number Six's co-operation with a woman numbered 18 and a predictive computer named Juliet.

It's like reading a four-episode arc of The Prisoner, which kind of works but also seems like a collection of disparate ideas, roughly connected by the thread of whether Six should trust or betray 18 -- in other words, the Prisoner's Dilemma (so no, it's not merely a snappy title).

The authors do a creditable job of engaging The Prisoner with current concerns. Whilst The Prisoner was very much a product of its time -- it couldn't be more late-1960s if it had starred Syd Barrett and been written by Kurt Vonnegut -- its bigger ideas about society and authority are still relevant, enabling this novel to incorporate reflections on well-worn contemporary issues like celebrity culture and terrorism to genuinely interesting effect. The end result is not entirely successful, but Number Six comes out of it looking as timeless as ever.

On the face of it, The Prisoner is unpromising territory for tie-in novels, as the three unimpressive books in the late 1960s would seem to have proven. Indeed, that's true of a bunch of the actual episodes, where Patrick McGoohan's influence was minimal and, despite satirical leanings, the show drifted back to the series Lew Grade thought he was getting -- the one about an imprisoned spy trying to escape his captors.

But it goes beyond that... one of the most important tools in the novelist's armoury is the ability to take the reader inside the protagonist's mind. So how do you do that with a hero whose central, defining, feature is his absolute, unshakeable determination to ensure his mind is his own?

Well, Booth and Blum open with a a rather nice solution to the problem. At the start, we're taken inside the Prisoner's head as he enacts a ritualistic morning routine, consciously locking his real self away as he becomes the inscrutable Number Six. It works, and lets us hear Six's thoughts without knowing if this is the real man.

The story (based around the idea of control by prediction) is perhaps over-complex, stuffed with interconnecting plotlines whereas the series would complicate one idea with deceptions, but manages to bring the Village up to date, pulling it into the world of the Global Village, with a nicely subtle suggestion of the outside world identity of the computer genius Number 101 (a perfect choice of number). I doubt we'll ever get real Prisoner in print (unless Patrick McGoohan finally takes up his pen)... but this is a nice substitute.

(Warning -- this review contains SPOILERS! Click here to read)

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"It isn't a perfect example of McGoohanesque dialogue. That would be impossible. What it is is a very good read. The themes explored are brave, without being reckless. The writing includes humour, without lampooning the series. The approach is daring, without being arrogant. It references the series, without ripping it off. It's fast-paced, without getting sidetracked. And, perhaps most importantly, it dares to be different without being ridiculous.

"Put simply, The Prisoner's Dilemma is the most enjoyable piece of Prisoner fiction this reviewer has ever read. The fact that the competition wasn't up to much needn't matter."

"The main themes of media control and behaviour-predicting technology have complex connections, going deep enough into chaos theory, modelling and programming for hard SF, exploring authoritarian manipulation of the media enough for Chomsky and of personal relationships enough for Orwell, while providing enough good, old-fashioned surreal parody, humour and action that, despite these themes, the novel avoids bleakness and has great readability.

"However, there are some things the written word can do that the TV series never could, and I doubt that all the CGI in the world could do quite as much as Jon and Rupe have to make Rover scary. No more the bouncy weather balloon, but a strange, screeching amorphous blob of pure terror that eats you alive, body and soul, piece by piece. What the Irrationals do to it is wonderful, and its revenge more so. I am very tempted to quote here, but will hold back and allow you to read it for yourself."

"This is a unique series, often surreal, and so much of the series' identity comes from the performance of the lead actor (Patrick McGoohan, who isn't involved with Powys Media's licence) and the visuals. How do you capture that in prose? Well, Blum and Booth have managed it. The Prisoner's Dilemma feels right, it feels like a child of the '60s, yet it feels modern as it addresses concerns (not unfamiliar to followers of Blum) like the Internet, 9/11 and reality TV."