Review from my blog
I love the Mary Russell books and the Martinelli series is my favourite police procedural. I also thoroughly enjoyed Folly which I encouraged my Mum to read recently. So it was with some surprise that I discovered I wasn't really enjoying Touchstone. The problem with this book is the plot is too slight to carry through 500 pages. American Bureau Agent Harris Stuyvesant is tracking a bomber in England amidst the turmoil of social unrest preceding the general strike of 1926. He has a suspect but no direct proof. This would have been fine if the story had just been from Stuyvesant's point of view but unfortunately all six major characters get their turn at the helm. Sure it adds depth and layers to the characters but wreaks havoc with the pacing. There's one section where all six characters get a quiet introspective chapter to themselves and the plot moves nowhere. Laurie R. King's writing is fine. Her knowledge of the political landscape of the time is impressive. But the only real suspense is wondering when the plot is going to start moving. ( )

Laurie R. King’s writing is both intelligent and enjoyable.

Touchstone is a stand alone book and not part of her Mary Russell or Kate Martinelli series.

This book is set in 1926 in and around London and involves a group of three dimensional characters that blurs the line between the bad guys and the good guys. The story involves covert government operations, a possible bomber, a man with psychic abilities, and all the players seem to have a hidden agenda.

There is history to be found in the details of the story and there is mystery in the story plot and pure reading pleasure between the first and last pages.

Bennett Grey survived being blown up at the end of World War I. In fact he believes he was blown to pieces and somehow miraculously re-assembled. With the experience came the new ability to see into people, to "feel" accurately whether they are telling the truth. When his ability is noticed he becomes a "touchstone" for British intelligence, useful in prisoner interrogation, and in the development of lie detection technology. Upset by the brutality of the interrogations he participates in, he withdraws from the project and becomes a recluse, abandoning the woman he was to marry, and going to live in Cornwall.

He emerges to help Harris Stuyvesant, an American agent attached the Bureau of Investigation, who is looking for an archist, a bomber, thought to be British, already responsible for a number of deaths in the USA.
Their quest leads them to a houseparty held near Oxford, to the home of the woman whom Grey still loves, so that the American can get close to the man whom he believes is the bomber.

The main story is set against the impending General Strike of 1926, a time when many are hoping for the collapse of the British government, and some sort of Revolution. For many of the characters the agenda is one of high political ideals, of a possible role for themselves in a new order. For Harris Stuyvesant though the agenda is personal. It is also a story of manipulation, but it wasn't until the last 20 or so pages that I thought I knew what was going to happen, and the identity of the bomber.

TOUCHSTONE came to my attention originally because it was short-listed for Left Coast Crime's THE BRUCE ALEXANDER MEMORIAL HISTORICAL MYSTERY. While I was at LCC I hade the opportunity to attend a couple of panels that Laurie King was on, and also to get Laurie to sign a copy of the book for me.

I originally thought, about TOUCHSTONE, "another American writer rather cheekily setting her novel in England", but I have been pleasantly surprised. Like Elizabeth George's, Laurie R. King's writing has an authentic English feel to it. The story reflects an incredible depth of research, and only the occasional American spelling points to the nationality of the author (and the location of the publisher). ( )

Eh. She's written better. ( )

Touchstone is perhaps King’s most ambitious novel yet. It takes place between the World Wars, which is not a new period for King—most of the Russell books take place in the 1920s—but the characters are new, and the plot felt more complex than is typical of her books.

King has a wonderful ability to craft mysteries that keep you on the edge of your seat but that also make you think about more substantial questions. I really enjoyed how in this book she could make me feel sympathy for people who are doing despicable acts without ever seeming to condone their actions.

As for the mystery itself, well, I figured out the key element early on, but that did not at all ruin the story for me. With King, figuring out whodunit is beside the point. How, why, when, and what then are the real questions. And when it comes to those questions, Touchstone offered lots of surprises along the way.

See my complete review at my blog. ( )

This stand-alone novel is a tale of suspense set in England in the period between the two World Wars. The country is under stress due to economic strain and a paralyzing labor strike is in the offing. Touchstone has only about seven major characters to track; the focus is on following the psychological mindset of each during negotiations between the various factions. There is a primary character that serves as a central focal point in the action for the bulk of the book – Harris Stuyvesant, a well-drawn American agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). King uses a slow pacing to build characters, but the final third of the book moves rapidly and carries the reader along. The final resolution is neither weak nor entirely happy.

Laurie R. King is the mistress of dense characterization and mood. Her unauthorized Holmes books can be read by even the most fanatical of Baker Street Irregulars without the usual jaw grinding that accompanies most such efforts, and her detective series about Kate Martinelli, a contemporary lesbian police officer are equally good.

In TOUCHSTONE King has produced yet another cast of richly drawn and interesting characters, from an undercover American government agent to the scion of one of the oldest and noblest families in England. Each character, even those who merely pop onto the page for a scene or two, is richly drawn and individualized, in ways that demonstrate King's mastery of this art. She allows her characters to come to life on every page, without the tiresome need to tell her readers what everything she writes means.

This gift has made TOUCHSTONE much more of a character study than a traditional mystery or suspense thriller. If there is any criticism to be leveled at the book at all, it is perhaps that the plot seemed overwhelmed by the tangled threads of each character's life.

Fans of the film GOSFORD PARK should enjoy this book, for although it doesn't explore the differences between upstairs and downstairs as thoroughly, it is rife with interesting personalities. ( )

In my opinion, Laurie R. King is One of the Best Authors Ever. Admittedly, my knowledge of contemporary literature is limited, but I'll stand by it anyway.

I was aware of King before I ever read her. She had the temerity to use Sherlock Holmes as a character in one of her series, the Mary Russell series. All the Homes pastiches I had read were pretty dreadful, and understood the character not at all. But people kept talking about how good she was, and I did finally read some of her Kate Martinelli series about a woman policeman in San Francisco. They were very good. So eventually, I took the plunge and read the Mary Russell series and loved them, too She did right by Holmes., if you can get around the outrageous premise he would get romantically involved with a woman, and a young one, at that. King makes it work, and she does it by having a respect for Conan Doyle's famous character.

But characters in a series have some limitations. They have to survive, first of all. They have to develop as characters, but not in a way that will turn the reader off (although the Dexter series by Jeff Lindsay has pushed that envelope until it is almost useless). So King has written some stand-alone novels, and while her series books are excellent, it is in her stand-alones that she puts herself into that rarified atmosphere of author whose works illuminate the human condition in marvelous, and sometimes heartbreaking, ways.

In Touchstone, the plot revolves around Harris Stuyvesant, a US FBI agent in 1927. Harris is after radicals, especially one who has set three bombs in the US. The trail leads him to Richard Bunsen, a British labor leader, and Harris goes to England after him. A British agent connects hims with Bennett Grey, a man with the odd talent of usually knowing who is telling the truth. Grey and his sister are good friends of Laura Hurleigh, who is a Duke's daughter and Bunsen's mistress. Grey is able to connect Harris up with the Hurleigh family. A tightly-plotted story ensues, building to a literally shattering conclusion, one that takes the reader apart and puts her back together as a new individual.

In Laura Hurleigh , King has created a character that deserves to be rediscovered by new generations of readers much as they now discover King Lear, or Frodo Baggins, or Sherlock Holmes. Bennett Grey is almost as good a character.

Recommended reading? No, more like required reading. ( )

Laurie King is one of my favorite authors; her Mary Russell series continues to charm. Set primarily in the post World War I era, the series has given King a solid background in the era. She uses this expertise in Touchstone, a stand-alone thriller set in England in 1926.

At that time, there was a great deal of political unrest, much of it labor-related, in both England and the US. This was the time of the Wobblies, Emma Goldberg, and the anarchists. Sacco and Vanzetti had just been unjustly arrested (and would be callously executed) for political crimes they did not commit, thanks to the rising hysteria in the US about political terrorism. Harris Stuyvesant, an agent of the relatively young US Bureau of Investigation (newly headed by J. Edgar Hoover), has been involved in political investigations for some time. In the past year or so, three seemingly unconnected cases of cleverly-placed bombs have absorbed his attention, especially since one of them, and the ensuing riot, was the cause of his younger brother Tim’s severe brain damage and resulting loss of memory and ability to function. Stuyvesant believes that there is an English connection—that the bomber came from England. Faced with skeptical superiors, he travels to England on his own to see if he can track down this elusive terrorist.

The story takes place over a few weeks in April. The cast of characters is a rich and varied one, from the members of the one of the most blue-blooded families in England to a shadowy sadistic “Major” in Intelligence to another member of the aristocracy, Bennett Grey, whose war injury has left him with a peculiar and terrifying hypersensitivity to sensations and to people, to the point in which he is a veritable Truth Tester, able to tell instantly whether or not a person is lying.

King centers the plot just before the Miner’s Strike and General Strike in England in 1926. She weaves a great deal of information on labor troubles and political repression in England into the plot, as well as interesting facts about political investigations in the US at that time, too. She also gives a very fine view of the aristocracy—not all inbred, empty-headed chuckleheads by any means—and in particular of those upper-class women who dedicated themselves to assisting the poor. I found this particularly interesting, as I had completed, not long before, His Family, the 1918 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction by Ernest Poole, one of whose major characters is exactly such a woman in the US. King writes in a much easier fashion, but the parallels are there and are striking.

This should have been one of King’s finest books, but except for the last 30 pages—which are as thrilling and page-turning as any she has written—the book just didn’t quite hit it off for me. Maybe my expectations were too high. But I have the feeling it was the characters—they just didn’t seem to come off. I could not get under the skin of the protagonist, Stuyvesant, and too many of her English characters seemed mechanical. In particular, Bennett Grey was just plain unbelievable for me.

Yet King’s prose is as good as ever and the matrix of the plot—the political and labor unrest in England—is very well done—not intrusive in any way but a very vital part of the story. There are some polemical speeches, but deliberately so, and King makes us aware of this in her characters. So even that way of imparting information is part of the plot.

I think King’s finest novels are her stand-alones. A Darker Place is my all-time favorite, one that I reread every so often. Touchstone is good, but in my opinion is one of her second-tier books. ( )

I loved it, but with some reservations. No one writes historical fiction like Laurie R. King, but I'm still not sure about some of the places she took the plot. Still, it was a very enjoyable read.

(Full review at my blog) ( )

While not her best book, this is a compelling look at the traumas of war; power and the ends justifying the means. I thought the love story in the backdrop between the protaganist and the sister of the war scarred "touchstone" was distracting to the main themes and not well fleshed out ( )

Laurie King is one of my favorites. She introduces all new characters in this 1920s novel about an American FBI agent who goes on a hunt in England for a terrorist.

There are many parallels between 1920s England and present-day US.

It was a little long, but I read every word and enjoyed them all. My favorite quote is "Changing political parties is like putting rouge on a corpse.", or something to that effect. ( )

Laurie R King continues to be one of my favorite authors. This is not one of her series titles, but an excellent stand-alone historical suspense/thriller. I love King's use of language, and I get "hooked" by her characters almost immediately. ( )