Touchstone

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 show more 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. show less

Touchstone – Laurie R. King
Audio performance by Jefferson Mays
4stars

This is the first book of a detective series by Laurie King. I’m already a committed fan of her Holmes/ Mary Russell series and I’ve also enjoyed many of the books featuring the contemporary San Francisco police detective, Kate Martinelli. This book combines some of the best features of those books with a new detective. Like the Mary Russell books, it is historical fiction set in England between the wars. It features a tough, hard-headed FBI agent named Harris Stuyvesant. The storyline resembles the suspense/thriller plots of the contemporary Martinelli series.

Harris arrives in England days before the 1926 General Strike. He is on the trail of an show more anarchist/bomber. As a detective, Harris fits a stereotype; he’s intelligent and brash, a bit too quick with his fists and a push over for a pretty girl. He is not popular with his superiors and is always on the verge of being fired. As a WWI veteran, he also sufferers from lingering shell shock. An extreme form of shell shock is pivotal to the character of Bennett Grey. Grey’s war experience left him crippled with unnaturally heightened perceptions. The growing threat of a terror plot connects Harris, Bennett Grey, and the despicable Major Carstairs of British Intelligence.

This book is thick with historical detail. The seething political unrest is set against a British Manor house with its aristocratic inhabitants. Two of the other leading characters, Sarah Grey and Laura Hurleigh, tap into the changing role of women and feminist frustrations. King gives each character a back story with details that encompass the Great War, the rise of socialism, the history and traditions of anarchism, along with their current and failed love affairs.

Fans of Laurie King’s police procedural books may feel this story is too slow with all of its background detail. Fans of the Mary Russell series may not like the heightened suspense and its dark violence. I thought the combination worked very well. show less

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 show more 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. show less

Although “Touchstone” got off to a rather confusing start (I wasn’t sure who I was reading about there for a while…), after the character of Bennett Grey was introduced, this book kicked into vintage Laurie R. King style and I was hooked.

This is a gripping story with characters more fully fleshed out than in your usual mystery/thriller. At times, Grey’s emotional pain was so strong that it practically leapt off the page. “Touchstone” has many of the usual elements of a thriller (twists, turns, doubting one character after another, an English country house…) and yet the reader gets far more than that. Beyond the mystery, there is also the sense that the reader truly is in the minds of Bennett Grey and Harris Stuyvesant. show more The relationship that develops between these two disparate people is much of what kept me reading, and enjoying, “Touchstone”. show less

She is one of my favorite authors and I was both disappointed and eager to see new characters. This is a very detailed and accurate-feeling historical piece, post World War I. The characters and setting are stunning, but the pacing dragged for me. The book has a strong and beautiful pathos.

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 show more 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. show less

There are days on which I whap myself on the head. Today is one. Apparently I didn't post a review of this previously. WHAT was I thinking?!!

This is a terrific book and "the next in the story" will be out in September, so go get this one & read it! It's set in the Twenties but it's a post-2001 book and that's all I'm going to tell you about that. After you read it you will understand what I'm saying.

Laurie King writes a lot of her books set in the fascinating and difficult times between the world wars. This one focuses on two male protagonists, one a former-FBI American tough guy and one a British survivor who just barely made it out of the war. As you might expect with LRK, the tough guy is a real person with tender places and you show more don't want to mess with the fragile survivor.

We spend time in the (Amazing) country house of an aristocratic British family and in the wilder places in the UK. Things blow up. literally. By the end of the book you don't want to stop hanging out with these characters. (Next book, The Bone of Paris, thank goodness). And the plot has faked you out at least twice. I love this book. show less