Where the Truth Lies, Rupert Holmes
Where the Truth Lies, Rupert Holmes
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Where the Truth Lies

Author: Rupert Holmes

Narrator: Ana Gasteyer, Michael McKean

Abridged: 4 hr 8 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/24/2003


Synopsis

Where the Truth Lies is a tour de force of sinister mystery, sly comedy, grand cuisine, and incredible sex—a sensual, sardonic, neo-Dickensian thriller in which a latter-day Alice careens through the seductive Wonderland of New York and Los Angeles in the dark heart of the 1970s.

This novel of intrigue speeds from one vivid setting to another, all of them factually real even as they are fantastically surreal: a clandestine club in Disneyland with a dazzlingly well stocked bar; a dizzying Shangri-La of a castle hidden away in Burbank; a drive-in movie theater nestled below the most chic streets of midtown Manhattan; an elegant table for four perched thirty thousand feet above the earth.

Written by Edgar, Tony, and Grammy Award winner Rupert Holmes (who first came to public attention in the mid-seventies as a singer and writer of story songs), Where the Truth Lies will wine and dine you in wickedly whimsical company, all the while luring you into a labyrinth of ever-sharpening bends and darkening corners.

The tale is told by O’Connor, a vivacious, free-spirited young journalist known for her penetrating celebrity interviews and bent on unearthing secrets long ago buried by the handsome showbiz team of singer Vince Collins and comic Lanny Morris. These two highly desirable men, once inseparable (and insatiable where women were concerned), were driven apart by a bizarre and unexplained death that may have cast one of them as a murderer.

As the tart-tongued, eye-catching O’Connor ventures deeper into this unsolved mystery, she finds herself compromisingly coiled around both men, knowing more about them than they realize and less than she might like, but increasingly fearful that she now knows far too much.

At once funny, frightening, delightful, and disturbing as it restores the opulent Hollywood and Manhattan of the seventies to their garish glory, Where the Truth Lies drops its veils like a giddy and voluptuous Salome who knows not what reward or punishment awaits her when she is at last naked. It is the work of a master storyteller and wit at the very top of his form.

About Rupert Holmes

Rupert Holmes’s New York Times bestseller, Murder Your Employer (the first volume in his new McMasters Guide to Homicide series), was also a Top Ten on the Indie Bestseller List, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Houston Chronicle, and Associated Press. Holmes has received two Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America, and multiple Tony® and Drama Desk Awards for his Broadway mystery musicals, including Curtains and his Tony® award–winning Best Musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood. His first novel, Where the Truth Lies, was nominated for a Nero Wolfe award for Best American Mystery Novel, was a Booklist Top Ten Debut Novel, and became a motion picture starring Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon. His second novel, Swing, included his own original, clue-bearing musical score. His stories have been anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories, On a Raven's Wing, A Merry Band of Murderers, Dead Man’s Hand, and Christmas at the Mysterious Bookshop. Holmes has adapted Agatha Christie, John Grisham, and R.L. Stine for the Broadway and international stage. His lyrics have been published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and EQ anthologies, and he is also the writer/vocalist of several Top Ten hits, including his Billboard #1 multi-platinum classic with a memorable twist-ending: “Escape (The Pina Colada Song).”


Reviews

Goodreads review by Beth on February 13, 2018

Read this quite a while ago, but was thinking about it today and wanted to put a review out there because this is an absolutely gripping book. (PLEASE skip the movie. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't the book and changing one of the main characters from a suave Dean Martin to a suave Brit just didn......more

Goodreads review by Amanda on October 06, 2008

I picked this up on whim while I was mourning the fact that I had finished "Rebecca." I thought it might be in somewhat of the same drama, mystery, suspense, love, etc... 22-pages in, it referenced "Rebecca," and I knew I was in for a good time. Full of wonderfull, albeit dark, comedy, thrilling susp......more

Goodreads review by Jenna on November 08, 2018

This was NUTS. Starts off kinda slow and easy and ramps up to crazytown, especially for the last 50 pages which just keep whipping out twists until the last sentence. As somebody who's been in her own personal crazytown this year, reading and watching Martin and Lewis media like a fiend, I enjoyed a......more

Goodreads review by Joe on January 24, 2016

Author Rupert Holmes is a real renaissance man. A musician early on, famous for "Escape(The Pina Colada Song)", he's written 2 novels(this book was his first), and plays, including the Tony winning "The Mystery of Edwin Drood", which was based on Dickens last, incomplete, novel. So, he's won a Gramm......more


Quotes

"Where the Truth Lies is a beguiling suspense novel.  It's sexy and surprising, witty and intriguing.  I was hooked from the very first page." –Candace Bushnell, author of Sex in the City and Four Blondes

“Days after you finish this book, you’ll still feel the narrator’s voice elbowing through your brain. Fully realized characters, ruthless commentary, and a beautifully dark sense of humor—all masquerading as a hyper-clever mystery. You won’t look at the truth the same way again.” —Brad Meltzer, author of The Millionaires

“Rupert Holmes seats you gently next to an irresistible narrator only to entangle you completely in her twisted, dark, exhilarating troubles. The ensuing thriller crosses a Dickensian world of deceit and destiny with the slipping glory of 1970s New York and Los Angeles. Every character is so alive with delicious secrets that you’ll never suspect Where the Truth Lies.” —Matthew Pearl, author of The Dante Club

“Five pages into Rupert Holmes’s Where the Truth Lies, I was intrigued. Twenty pages in, I was laughing. A hundred pages in, my wife told me to turn off the damned light already and come to bed. This is a book astonishing not only for its intricate plot and rich characters but for the ways in which it finds humor in the darkest of places.” —Eric Garcia, author of Anonymous Rex and Matchstick Men

“Rupert Holmes is a genius.” —Jason Alexander