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(More customer reviews)Swing is a lyrical ride to a time where life seemed simpler, but perhaps it wasn't. Europe was refusing admission to Jews. War drums were beating in Europe and Japan. Pearl Harbor was about year away. However, if you wanted to talk on a phone, you used a rotary dial, you could repair your own car and the government was still answerable to the people.
It's 1940 and Ray Sherwood is a sax player on the road with the Jake Donovan Orchestra, who is still suffering over the death of his daughter that happened a long time ago. He is a wise cracking narrator of the Phillip Marlowe school.
When he arrives in San Francisco with the band, there is a message for him at his hotel. A woman named Gail Prentiss, who the desk clerk tells him is young and a looker, wants to meet him for breakfast at the new Treasure Island, built by the Army Corps of Engineers for the Golden Gate Exposition, the West Coast's answer to the recently held World's Fair.
When he arrives for his appointment, another woman sits down, asks him if he's American, when he answers in the affirmative, she proposes. He declines her offer. She leaves and he meets Gail who wants him to score her piano piece for a full orchestra, so it can be played by Japan's Pan Pacific Orchestra during the Exposition. While he is talking to Gail, the woman he'd met earlier plunges to her death from the Exposition's Tower landing literally at his feet.
It turns out she's French, Jewish and wanted to marry Ray or any American, so she could stay in the country. The cops think that is enough of a reason for her to kill herself, her fear of being forced to go back. And Ray is so smitten with Gail that he doesn't think about it. And thus begins a novel of double crosses and double dealings, betrayal and some of the best prewar intrigue you'll ever come across. To say this is a captivating novel that's hard to put down is an understatement. Rupert Holmes has captured a time and place, an era and the people who populated it and he's served it up raw and noir.
This is just an extrordinay work, better than his WHERE THE TRUTH LIES and that is really saying something. Also, as a bonus, at least for now, you get a CD with music by the author that has clues to the story imbedded in the songs. Rupert Holmes, by the way, made his mark as a talented musician before he turned to writing Tony winning plays and novels that are just to delicious to adequately describe, so you will be pleasantly surprised that the CD is not only excellent, but worth every bit as much as the book, a very good reason to get this book now while the getting is good.
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Swing: A Mystery
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