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    Touchstone
    Touchstone
    Touchstone
    Audiobook17 hours

    Touchstone

    Written by Laurie R. King

    Narrated by Jefferson Mays

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Famed for her Mary Russell mysteries and novels featuring Kate Martinelli, New York Times best-selling author Laurie R. King has amassed a large and devoted following. His existence shattered by the Great War, Bennett Grey is investigated by an American agent who thinks he may be useful for protecting national security. "... an entertaining mix of ambition, intrigue, social unrest and unfettered idealism."-Arizona Republic
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateOct 3, 2008
    ISBN9781436133173
    Touchstone
    Author

    Laurie R. King

    Laurie R. King is the Edgar Award–winning author of the Kate Martinelli novels and the acclaimed Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes mysteries, as well as a few stand-alone novels. The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, the first in her Mary Russell series, was nominated for an Agatha Award and was named one of the Century’s Best 100 Mysteries by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. A Monstrous Regiment of Women won the Nero Wolfe Award. She has degrees in theology, and besides writing she has also managed a coffee store and raised children, vegetables, and the occasional building. She lives in northern California.

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    Reviews for Touchstone

    4/5

    205 ratings24 reviews

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    • 3/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      I loved this book!! Another amazing read, and very thorough, too! The main characters were compelling and I am going to miss them, now that I am done... :(
    • 4/5
      I always enjoy Laurie King's books, and have read all of her Kate Martinelli and Mary Russell books, but somehow overlooked this quasi-standalone novel. I enjoyed the characters and the period details, but somehow couldn't quite accept everything as realistic. Despite that, I couldn't put the book down and continued reading via Kindle on my phone in the car!
    • 5/5
      I'm not sure how I overlooked this novel when it came out, but I very much enjoyed Harris and Bennett as characters. Both are deeply flawed, but also possessed of innate integrity. Harris is also a joy because he has a gift for putting things together and seeing the bigger picture. The political background was very interesting.
    • 5/5
      Just before the release of The Bones of Paris by Laurie R. King, I was offered an egalley to review. Now while Touchstone and The Bones of Paris stand alone, I felt like I didn't understand and Harris Stuyvesant's personality and motivation. To avoid giving The Bones of Paris a rushed and unfair review, I decided to start at the beginning, namely Touchstone.Agent Harris Stuyvesant, American, is working in London, following a string of bombing from the United States, across the pond. Now he's being called into the countryside to work with a man who could break the case open, except that he's too shell shocked.Stuyvesant ends up at the Hurleigh House, belonging to one of the oldest and most influential families. Some one there is responsible for the politically motivated violence.In terms of tone and basic mystery plot, the book mostly reminds me of the Arncliffe Puzzle by Gordon Holmes (1907). Both focus on the power that the oldest nobility have (for good or bad) and the way the 20th century was a difficult transition as the well established (for better or worse) class structure had begun to buckle.
    • 3/5
      This is what happens when editors go on extended vacations.

      Touchstone is a great psychological thriller. The reader is right inside of everybody's psyches. We know people's backstories, what makes them tick. King does a great job of evoking a particular time and place in history.

      But the great premise makes the novel that resulted even more disappointing. The shifts in point of view are so rapid that they're distracting. Twice the author forgets how many daughters the family that is central to the plot has. She mentions "the third daughter" on a couple of occasions, forgetting that there's actually a fourth. It's unclear, at least to me, which of the two women's points of view is represented in the very first chapter, since it turns out that both women are involved in the incident described there.

      There's also the fact that parts of this book felt recycled from some of King's earlier novels. The loving detail she lavishes on descriptions of the Hurleigh house sounds suspiciously like descriptions of the manor house in Justice Hall. Bennett Grey's posttraumatic "abilities" are astonishingly reminiscent of the detective abilities of Mary Russell & Sherlock Holmes.

      And it was so grim and dark! Spending all that time inside the heads of those poor tormented people makes me want to take a nice long break before I pick up the sequel to this one.
    • 4/5
      Six-word review:Slow, suspenseful build to explosive finish.
    • 5/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      Reading a Laurie King mystery is relaxing. I do not have to worry about unbelievable plotlines, or the main character making incredibly stupid decisions because it's the only way to move the plot in the right direction. I know that the characters, and the era and setting, will be fully realized. And I know that there will be more substance to the book than simply solving who-dun-it.

      The only problem is that I stay up until 3am finishing it. And then thinking about the issues raised in the book for the next several days.
    • 4/5
      It took me a little while to get into this, but once I did I couldn't stop thinking about it when I wasn't reading it.

      Basically, it's England in 1926, and there's this huge strike brewing, and everyone is trying to recover from the war, and this American agent comes over to try to track down a union-related bomber, and he meets a guy who has some unusual abilities, and a sinister government official, and a pretty girl, and a beautiful woman from an aristocratic family, and there's a house party (who doesn't love a good house party?)

      I loved the characters in this book. Harris Stuyvesant reminded me a bit of a rougher Archie Goodwin (one of my favorite literary characters of all time), if he'd shown up in Lord Peter Wimsey's world.
      The only disappointing bit was that I kind of wanted Harris and Bennett to get together. I thought it MIGHT happen, being Laurie King, but it didn't. Oh well.
    • 5/5
      Very consistent characters and a very good story. It was memorable and a keeper.
    • 4/5
      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. The relationship that develops between these two disparate people is much of what kept me reading, and enjoying, “Touchstone”.
    • 5/5
      I love this book. Normally I hate politics but these are sufficiently removed that I can deal. I love the characters; I even like the romance. The story is just so rich, the main character so damn likable, I would just stay in this world forever. Of course the denouement makes it all worthwhile... but I do wish there had been just a BIT more! Highly recommended for mystery fans, LRK fans, people interested in: England between the wars, unusual abilities, fascinating characters, class conflict... I could go on. Read it!
    • 5/5
      Touchstone takes place in the same time period as the Mary Russell books (post World War I) but features an entirely new cast of characters. The central characters include Bennett Grey, a deeply damaged war veteran who seems to have an intuitive understanding of people’s motivations, Sarah Grey, Bennett’s sister, Harris Stuyvesant, an American war veteran and federal agent with his own agenda, Lady Laura Hurleigh, an English lady and do-gooder who mixes with radical politics. Here is Bennett Grey’s description of his special ability to serve as a sort of human lie detector: “Dissonance might be a closer description. I came across a fake Rembrandt portrait a while ago; standing in front of it was like being assaulted by the clamor of a dozen mismatched bells, out of tune and very disturbing.” There are fabulous descriptions of eccentric British aristocracy in the twenties as well as the radical politics of the day which included mob violence and bombs. The themes of radical politics, poverty and terrorism raise questions above and beyond the standard mystery and resonate deeply with the moral issues of our own times.
    • 5/5
      Loved it. Laurie King is an absorbing writer, and this is no exception, although I did find it a little slower to get into than some. It's set in 1920s Britain, where American agent Stuyvesant Harris has come to informally investigate some anarchist bombings. His suspect is a politician, whose fiancee is a daughter of an ancient aristocracy. How can Harris even be introduced to these people? It's a complex tale with many twists of both politics and persons, much of it focussed around the titular character, a shell-shocked brain-injured veteran of the trenches, with an uncanny knack for discerning truth.
    • 4/5
      Touchstone......always finds true gold. Well, this is another really golden story from Laurie R. King. A mystery/suspense novel set in post WWI England. There is a brash American FBI man, a working class/nobility labor struggle full of issues which ring true even today, and to top it off, the Laurie R. King trademark, strong willed, principled, intelligent women. It's a really good read!
    • 3/5
      Review from my blogI 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.
    • 5/5
      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).
    • 3/5
      Eh. She's written better.
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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.