Trace Memory (novel)

Trace Memory was the fifth release in the BBC Torchwood Novels series.

Publisher's summary
Tiger Bay, Cardiff, 1953. A mysterious crate is brought into the docks on a Scandinavian cargo ship. Its destination: the Torchwood Institute. As the crate is offloaded by a group of local dockers, it explodes, killing all but one of them, a young Butetown lad called Michael Bellini.

Fifty-five years later, a radioactive source somewhere inside the Hub leads Torchwood to discover the same Michael Bellini, still young and dressed in his 1950s clothes, cowering in the vaults. They soon realise that each has encountered Michael before – as a child in Osaka, as a junior doctor, as a young police constable, as a new recruit to Torchwood One. But it’s Jack who remembers him best of all.

Michael’s involuntary time-travelling has something to do with a radiation-charged relic held inside the crate. And the Men in Bowler Hats are coming to get it back.

Featuring Captain Jack Harkness as played by John Barrowman, with Gwen Cooper, Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato and Ianto Jones as played by Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, Naoki Mori and Gareth David-Lloyd, in the hit series created by Russell T Davies for BBC Television.

Characters

 * Jack Harkness
 * Gwen Cooper
 * Owen Harper
 * Toshiko Sato
 * Ianto Jones
 * Michael Bellini

Continuity

 * Reference is made to the Sky Gypsy from TW: Out of Time, The Torchwood Estate in 1879 (DW: Tooth and Claw), the fairies of Roundstone Woods (TW: Small Worlds) and Albion Hospital in 1941 (DW: The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances).
 * The events of DW: The Curse of Fenric, TW: To the Last Man and DW: The Unquiet Dead are also referenced by Hugo Faulkner.
 * The explorer who discovers the Vondraxian Orb is referred to as "Nelson-Stanley". This may be Edgar Nelson-Stanley, the husband of the The Sarah Jane Adventures character Bea Nelson-Stanley, who appears in SJA: Eye of the Gorgon.
 * The Quantum transducer is mentioned. (TW: Ghost Machine)
 * Jack states that the year is 2008.
 * Jack and Michael hide out in Shangri-La hotel, formerly Shangri-La holiday camp. (DW: Delta and the Bannermen)

Timeline

 * Trace Memory occurs after TWN: Something in the Water
 * Trace Memory occurs before TW: Meat