“Where the Truth Lies,” his wonderfully witty first novel, proves once and for all that Holmes is no one-hit wonder. Swimming in the Scotch-soaked excesses of 1970s Los Angeles, our plucky young protagonist (aren’t they all?) starts snooping into a decades-old murder. How did that luscious redhead (aren’t they all?) wind up in the bathtub, missing a pulse and a couple of toes? Could America’s most beloved comedy duo be involved? It was, after all, their bathtub and, to a lesser extent, their redhead.
As crime novels go, this is pretty predictable stuff. And Holmes’s frequent sex scenes have less heat than a frozen cocktail. (“I began to give myself over to this engine we’d together constructed… a turbine with him and me as mindless pistons.”) But by and large, he manages to avoid the genre’s usual ham-fisted mugging, playing the clue-chasing for subtle laughs and charming atmospherics. Sure, we want to find the real killer. But first let’s chow down at General Motors’ Autopub or pop a couple of Tuinals and tour Disneyland.
“Where the Truth Lies” has all the gloss and glamour you’d expect from a Hollywood whodunit, but the pages spent with the victim’s devastated, somnambulant family are by far the book’s best. One possible explanation can be found in the moving acknowledgments at the end of the novel. Holmes’s only daughter, Wendy, died at 10, and his younger son, Tim, suffers from severe autism. Holmes worked seven years on “Where the Truth Lies,” writing only between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. so the days would be free for, among other things, batting practice with his elder son, Nick. “I live the life of a vampire,” he says a bit wearily before catching himself and brightening again. “But sometimes I do manage to get a full four hours.” It’s no wonder, then, that Holmes has penned the perfect tale for insomniacs. “Where the Truth Lies” won’t give you brain freeze, but it’ll keep you tossing and turning pages all night long.
