TBR #30. Touchstone by Laurie R. King.
First sentence: “Eight days after stepping off the Spirit of New Orleans from New York, Harris Stuyvesant nearly killed a man.”
Set in England in the 1920s, King’s stand-alone mystery novel is a bit of espionage, a bit of crime noir, and a bit of historical period piece. Harris Stuyvesant is an undercover FBI agent trying to do some investigation off the record–he’s after an Englishman suspected of planting three bombs on American soil. He finds an unlikely ally in Bennett Grey, a shell-shocked captain who has an unusual skill: acute sensitivity that allows him to know when a person is lying.
A weekend at a country house, political unrest with the threat of a miners strike, and bomb threats contribute to the rising emotional tension and danger. A slow start ultimately yields a satisfying twist. I prefer the Mary Russell series on the whole, but I enjoyed this one quite a lot.
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