A warning to potential readers: Do not be misled by the dust jacket on Laurie R. King’s TOUCHSTONE. I can’t remember a book whose author has been so ill-served by her cover. From the disingenuous and dull image of a man’s hands paging backwards through an old book (it doesn’t look like any Book of Common Prayer I’ve seen), to the ploddingly banal review blurbs on the back, to the breathless histrionics of the interior flap copy, everything about it is contrived to make one dislike the novel from the beginning.
But then you start to read, and from the very first few pages, you realize that King can write. It’s an absolute joy to read.
For some reason, the back cover provides lots of praise for her Mary Russell series (featuring Sherlock Holmes), to which this title does not belong. It also includes a silly line from The Denver Post, equating this book with the oft-maligned genre of historical fiction. Well, she writes of an historical era surely, but this is a very gripping tense and suspenseful thriller that is a far cry from Mary Renault or Lloyd Douglas. The word for TOUCHSTONE is that it is intense and tense, and it puts you on edge reading it, as you begin to wonder and worry about the characters in the plot.
And the plot’s intriguing: Set in the Twenties, American investigative agent Harris Stuyvesant is attempting to track down a terrorist bomber who has struck three times on American soil. His research has led him to believe that the culprit is British subject Richard Bunsen, and so he travels to England to get help from the authorities. But they are preoccupied with a coming general strike.
In the end, he is fobbed off on the curiously sinister Aldous Carstairs, who, in turn, introduces the agent to Bennett Grey, a tender synaesthete who was damaged in the war. Grey’s senses are constantly on hyper-alert, and he has the unique ability to detect hypocrisy and lies. He can sense the dissonance in anyone who isn’t quite telling the truth, but sensing those lies causes him actual physical pain. Still, he agrees to help Stuyvesant.
King is excellent at making us care deeply about Grey and Stuyvesant, and the latter has such an especially rich and entertaining history, I hope she spins a series out of him. His gruff but capable American demeanor is a perfect counterbalance for the postwar stiff upper lip of upper-class Britain. Grey’s ability is perhaps a bit overwrought, but King makes it believable enough, and the emerging friendship between the two male characters is nicely done.
All in all, this is an excellent non-series (so far) novel from one of the acknowledged masters of the mystery genre. –Mark Rose
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE ART OF DETECTION by Laurie R. King
• LOCKED ROOMS by Laurie R. King
Related posts:
- Locked Rooms
- The Art of Detection
- The Devil of Nanking
- BOOK WHORE >> 11.15.05
- Mr. Monk in Outer Space
