Where the Truth Lies

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.

For his Broadway musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Rupert Holmes became the first person in theatrical history to solely receive Tony Awards for Best Book, Best Music, and Best Lyrics, while Drood itself won the Tony Award for Best Musical. The Mystery Writers of America gave Holmes their coveted Edgar Award for his Broadway comedy-thriller Accomplice, the second time he received their highest honor. He created and wrote all four seasons of the critically acclaimed Emmy Award–winning series Remember WENN, and most recently authored the Broadway hit Say Goodnight, Gracie, based on the life of George Burns. Holmes began his career in the seventies as the writer and composer of songs so intricate that many have been included in mystery collections from Ellery Queen. The Los Angeles Times has stated that “Rupert Holmes is an American treasure.” Where the Truth Lies is his first novel; the film rights have been acquired by Atom Egoyan, director of The Sweet Hereafter. Holmes is currently working on a second novel for Random House, to be published in 2004.