Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Swing: A Mystery
    Swing: A Mystery
    Swing: A Mystery
    Audiobook11 hours

    Swing: A Mystery

    By Rupert Holmes

    Narrated by Patrick Lawlor

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Two-time Edgar Award winner Rupert Holmes-author of the critically acclaimed Where the Truth Lies and creator of the Tony Award-winning musical whodunit The Mystery of Edwin Drood-now fuses gripping suspense and evocative music in an innovative novel of intrigue set in 1940, during the very heart of the Big Band era. Swing is a multimedia experience, it contains musical tracks which give clues to the mystery.

    Jazz saxophonist and arranger Ray Sherwood, touring with the Jack Donovan Orchestra, is haunted by personal tragedy. But when a beautiful and talented Berkeley student named Gail Prentice seeks his help in orchestrating a highly original composition called Swing Around the Sun, which is slated to premiere at the Golden Gate Exposition on the newly created Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay, Ray finds himself powerfully drawn to the beguiling coed. Within moments of first setting eyes on her, Ray also witnesses a horrifying sight: a young woman plunging to her death from the island's emblematic Tower of the Sun.

    As the captivated Ray learns more about Gail and her unusual family, he finds himself trapped in a tightening coil of spiraling secrets- some personally devastating, all dangerous and deadly- in which from moment to moment nothing is certain, including Gail's intentions toward him and her connection to the dead woman who made such a grisly impact upon the stunning island. As events speed toward a shocking climax, Ray must use all his physical daring and improvisational skills to unlock an ominous puzzle whose sinister implications stretch far beyond anything he could imagine.

    Swing is a brilliant historical thriller-with an extra twist that extends beyond its pages. Accompanying the novel is a CD of original songs and music that feature prominently in the story, within which the reader may find additional clues to the mysteries of Swing.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMay 15, 2005
    ISBN9781400171552
    Swing: A Mystery
    Author

    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).” 

    Related to Swing

    Related audiobooks

    Thrillers For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires

      Mar 25, 2020

      RELEASED 7 APRIL 408 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook Author Grady Hendrix Publisher Quirk Books Grady Hendrix writes women beautifully, never more so than in his terrific coming-of-age horror My Best Friend’s Exorcism, so it’s an absolute joy to re

      1 min read

    • Article

      Also Out

      Mar 23, 2022

      We enjoyed previous Sarah Lotz books like The Three, so we were surprised that her latest looks like a simple love story. However, Amazon has IMPOSSIBLE (out now, Harper Collins) filed under “romance time travel”… A pleasure moon is the setting of Kh

      1 min read

    • Article

      One Thousand and One Nights

      Sep 9, 2019

      One Thousand and One Nights
      4 min read

    • Article

      My Gangfight On The Buses

      Jan 12, 2022

      My Gangfight On The Buses
      3 min read

    • Article

      All Of Us Here

      Jun 4, 2020

      All Of Us Here
      6 min read

    • Article

      Ghost Girl, Banana

      Aug 21, 2023

      By the time I was 25, there were only two things I remembered about Mumma. The first was that she smelled of watermelons, the second was that we were happy. We’d taken our father’s name of course, but a name is only half a story. The other half exist

      6 min read

    • Article

      A Substitution

      Jun 21, 2022

      A Substitution
      20 min read

    • Article

      Life In The past Lane

      Aug 27, 2021

      Life In The past Lane
      5 min read

    • Article

      Who Was That Girl?

      Apr 21, 2021

      Who Was That Girl?
      7 min read

    • Article

      I’m So Glad To Be Gay

      Oct 20, 2021

      Even in so blessed an era of sexual- preference enlightenment, coming out to a parent isn’t easy. One might imagine it were otherwise. One may, in one’s smugly hetero way, assume that any ‘stigma’ perished too long ago to make such a confession one i

      3 min read

    • Article

      Thumbs Up...

      May 10, 2022

      Thumbs Up...
      10 min read

    • Article

      How To Be A Real Man

      Jun 1, 2020

      How To Be A Real Man
      3 min read

    • Article

      Thumbs Up…

      May 10, 2022

      Thumbs Up…
      10 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Swing

    4/5

    36 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      mystery / historical fiction (San Francisco/UC Berkeley/Oakland, 1940). The plot turns were just too strange to be believable (even though they make more sense when further details are revealed at the end), and I don't know why the wise-cracking musician wouldn't have said something to his policeman friend as soon as he suspected something about Marie's reappearances after her supposed suicide, because hello?--that means that she has probably murdered Ada. He clearly wasn't stupid, and was lining up these clues so neatly he could've at least fretted a bit more about what Gail might have been covering up with her telephone lies.

      The accompanying musical CD supposedly contains "further clues" and does add a bit of dimension, but you can save your ears; it didn't significantly help the story. I liked Holmes' other mystery, Where the Truth Lies, a lot better.
    • 4/5
      Too many coincidences, although some of them get resolved in the complicated explanation involving international conspiracies and music. The idea behind the book is clever; I just wish it had been done better. I hadn't known that there was a San Francisco World's Fair right before World War II and during a time when Japan still had diplomatic relationships with the United States. Sally Rand, of fan fame, is a character in the story. Another character is a dancer who must return to Europe when the fair is over; unfortunately she is Jewish and realizes that her return is a death sentence for her. A jazz musician meets a woman young enough to be his daughter, becomes interested in her, and then learns that she might actually be his daughter. The musician is still grieving for his young daughter who died in a tragic accident. (The acknowledgments are well worth reading. The author mentions his own loss of a child; the television series that he wrote, Remember WENN, no doubt references her.)There is a cute---well, cute is not the right word---scene at a German heritage picnic with possible Nazi sympathizers in which two different groups of Jewish students at Berkeley disagree about whether or not pro-Nazi speech should be allowed or prevented; they end up throwing tomatoes at each other. Reminiscent of the dispute in which the ACLU argued in favor of Nazis marching in the predominately Jewish community of Skokie, Illinois. In other words, there are some serious issues.
    • 4/5
      The second mystery from Rupert Holmes is peppy and twisty, and a nice read for a plane.