"The Twilight Streets"
by Gary Russell

Veteran Doctor Who novelist and audio producer Gary Russell, currently acting as a script editor for both Who and Torchwood, returns to the book world with a new Torchwood novel, The Twilight Streets.

Set during the second season, the novel features the return of Bilis Manger, the fan-favourite villain from the TV episodes Captain Jack Harkness and End of Days. Here, we find him involved in the regeneration of Tretarri, a neglected area of Cardiff notable for a series of unexplained events. Most mysterious of all, however, is Captain Jack's physical inability to enter the area, leaving the rest of the Torchwood team to improvise and work alone...

Rather than a rematch with Bilis, Twilight Streets feels like much more of a continuation of the TV stories, drawing on elements of them to form the foundations of a new plot. This approach is unexpected but effective, and the central mysteries of the plot are suitably intriguing. The use of a minor character from the Doctor Who episode Boom Town as a major player in the novel is particularly good fun.

Compared to the first batch of Torchwood books, The Twilight Streets is a visibly shorter novel, and has a breezy swiftness about it - alike in pace to the Doctor Who New Series Adventures. This helps develop the story in a way that's pacey enough to engage and excite, but also gentle enough to hold back the answers right 'til the end.

Despite the shorter length, Russell seems to be aiming for an epic feel to the novel, with flash-forwards to a horrifying possible future and flashbacks to Torchwood's (and Jack's) past. The latter are highly successful and great fun for continuity-fans, but the glimpses of the twisted Torchwood Yet To Come seem implausible, and the depiction of the same events from different perspectives only serves to reinforce this. On the whole, shaking up the chronology works brilliantly, but it's disappointing that on a number of occasions it slips too far.

So, conclusions. Another Life, the first Torchwood novel I read, was an example of what Torchwood's first season should have been; whereas The Twilight Streets is a superb celebration of what Torchwood's second season is - strong plotting, excellent characterisation, and an all-round rip-roaring adventure. But bits and bobs of the story don't work, and perhaps Gary Russell himself sums it up best, with a line of dialogue given to Jack Harkness - "Nice, if a bit melodramatic."