The Touch Touchstone Series

Touch Touchstone Series: Book 1 (Revised), 95,700 words. Meet "Touch" Touchstone, peacetime US Army Counter Intelligence Agent. The year is 1965; he's been stationed in France because he speaks French. This is his only overseas assignment. He enlisted and has two years left. Touch resides in an apartment in Reuil-Malmaison, France, not far from Paris. He has a roommate, Nick, the unit's darkroom specialist. They become trusted friends and photograph Paris together, day and night. Touch is one of a number of special agents, but his work is boring. He wants action. After a year, he takes Nick's TR-4 and goes on vacation through Switzerland into Italy. Part of his plan, developed with Nick, is to take a series of photos in various cities for Nick. Almost immediately, he finds himself in situations involving a progressive amount of personal danger. In Bern, while doing a photo for Nick, he is almost killed. He's smart and begins to believe he has been set up, perhaps by his roommate. Then his girlfriend, Angela, who said she couldn't come, appears, and the next day two unknown individuals try to push him off the tram stop on the face of the Eiger mountain. A shaken Touch drives Angela to Italy via the cobblestone switchbacks of the St. Gotthard Pass. A frantic Touch,  pressed by a speeding black auto is chased down the mountain. He survives only by fast learning and quick reflexes. His pursuer didn't make it. More attempts on his life occur near Lake Colo and Lake Garda. The situation becomes more complex when Nick arrives and the trio barely survive an attack at night in the Verona amphitheater by Roman legionnaires armed with swords. Finally, Touch is filed in on what's happening, what roles he has been playing, and the dangerous game KGB agents are playing to undermine NATO's Nuclear capability. In the end, the good guys win. Touch is barely alive, however, and ends up with a "Z-shaped" scar while floating in the Bay of Venice.  

Touch Touchstone Series: Book 2, The Right Touch  (Revised), 98,400 words. Touch left the US Army after his enlistment was up. Now in his early 30s, he lives in Sausalito (San Francisco Bay area) as a photojournalist for several  magazines. He owns an MG and a parrot name Hypo. E find him writing a story about the death of Lee Anne, a Chinese woman, the sister of the bride to whose wedding Touch had received an invitation. Touch interrupted Lee Anne "peeking" at his equipment in his MG. Half Chinese and half occidental, she was a raving beauty who had mastered body language. The next time he saw her, she was dead, on the shore of the Narrows, 150 ft. below the edge of the cliff. That night Touch is brutally beaten. Two days later, in the hospital, he finds his ex-roommate from Paris, Nick, sitting next to the bed, smoking. The who and the why of everything bug Touch until he discovers a tape recording Lee Anne had tucked in his camera bag. The tape was no good without the data tape to which it was paired. Touch believes the second tape inside a valuable, very old Chinese box with no visible opening. After he interrogates Lee Anne's friends and co-workers, two are subsequently killed. The more Touch probes, the more people are killed. After opening the box with Nick's help, Touch races to Rosslyn Baker's home which was on fire when he entered it. He encounters and kills a Chinese man running out with a briefcase. He pulls the lovely Rosslyn out of the fire while the house burns and takes her back to his place. The opposition are members of a revived Chinese Tong into a variety of illegal activities which include financial subterfuge, secrecy, killing, and politics. The leader is a member of Kai Chin's household who is a leading member of Chinatown. Touch makes mistakes and Rosslyn is kidnapped to keep him from further action. Touch is also caught but as he escapes in the Tong warehouse, which catches fire, he loses Rosslyn.  The Epilogue ties everything together when Touch is photographing his old girlfriend. The leader is garroted and the story ends on an amusing telephone call from Nick.