Torchwood: Into the Silence

SPOILERY

Torchwood gets called to the scene when the corpses of prominent singers in town for the Welsh Amateur Operatic Contest start turning up with their throats slit open and their vocal cords removed. It's rare (unprecedented?) for Torchwood to encounter good aliens, and while the alien in Sara Pinborough's Into the Silence isn't evil, per se, it certainly racks up a body count.

Although the plot itself is only middling, there's great characterization of the alien menace and its victims--a gay couple, the parent of an autistic boy, a woman who's had a stroke recently, and more. Torchwood is assisted on this particular case by a newcomer to Cardiff named Tom Cutler, a police detective who had a history with Torchwood London. Cutler has a great backstory and would be fun to see more of, though his getting ret-conned and sent back to London makes that unlikely.

The ending is well-done, as Jack makes a difficult moral decision that foreshadows what we see him capable of doing in Children of Earth. I wouldn't say Into the Silence is a top-tier Torchwood novel, but it's a solid entry in the series.