"A well-done British mystery, with just that hint of Sherlockian style."

By: Laurie R. King

Genres: Thriller Political | Mystery Historical

Posted: December 15, 2007

Harris Stuyvesant traveled to London from New York, a semi- disgraced U.S. agent for the Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation. Hoover let him go on this quest to find a bomber who Harris believed was an English Labour Party leader. Although no one else believed the man, Richard Bunsen, was guilty of the bombings, Harris convinced his boss to let him try to get evidence. But Harris was spending his own money and coming up with nothing that tied Bunsen to the bombings.

And then he finally found someone in London's government who could help him, although he couldn't bring himself to trust the man. Aldous Carstairs had no obvious title, clearly doing something within the government that was top secret. But Carstairs said he could introduce Harris to a man, Capt. Bennett Grey, who would get him near Bunsen.

But when Harris meets Grey, he finds a man devastated by war injuries and touting a strange, paranormal talent. Despite his distrust of Carstairs, Harris is immediately drawn to Grey -- but doesn't really know if he can trust either man.

Harris' career rests on finding this bomber, and he can't go home without evidence. So he allies himself with Grey and Carstairs, two men who have a contentious relationship and may not even be able to help.

What a wonderful foray into British mysteries! Ms. King has created a detective worthy of Holmes and yanks the reader subtly and strongly into a Great Britain recreating itself between the World Wars. An intelligent, complex, beautifully written novel.

Book Summary

It’s eight years after the Great War shattered Bennett Grey’s life, leaving him with an excruciating sensitivity to the potential of human violence, and making social contact all but impossible. Once studied by British intelligence for his unique abilities, Grey has withdrawn from a rapidly changing world—until an American Bureau of Investigation agent comes to investigate for himself Grey’s potential as a weapon in a vicious new kind of warfare. Agent Harris Stuyvesant desperately needs Grey’s help entering a world where the rich and the radical exist side by side—a heady mix of the powerful and the celebrated, among whom lurks an enemy ready to strike a deadly blow at democracy on both sides of the Atlantic.

Here, among a titled family whose servants dress in whimsical costumes and whose daughter conducts an open affair with a man who wants to bring down the government, Stuyvesant finds himself dangerously seduced by one woman and—even more dangerously—falling in love with another. And as he sifts through secrets divulged and kept, he uncovers the target of a horrifying conspiracy, and wonders if he can trust his touchstone, Grey, to reveal the most dangerous player of all ….

Author Note

Read about TOUCHSTONE including research notes, photographs and more...

Touchstone by Laurie R. King

Touchstone

by: Laurie R. King

Bantam
January 1, 2008
On Sale: December 26, 2007
Featuring: Harris Stuyvesant
560 pages
ISBN: 0553803557
EAN: 9780553803556
Hardcover

Available in: