Liminal Spaces in Laurie R. King’s Touchstone and Keeping Watch

Drawing principally on the border poetics of Johan Schimanski and Stephen Wolfe, Gillies examines American crime writer Laurie R. King’s Touchstone (2007) and Keeping Watch (2003). She explores how Touchstone’s World War I British officer Bennett Grey and Keeping Watch’s American Vietnam veteran Allen Carmichael’s perceptions of their post-war worlds have been shaped by the borders they cross on their way to and from war. She argues that their war experiences, and particularly the traumas they carry home with them, directly influence how they orientate themselves in their post-war worlds. She concludes that their actions as detectives are thus to a large degree shaped by their status as war veterans.