Standing here solidly on my own two hands and going crazy

3. Where the Truth Lies; Rupert Holmes (386 pages)

OK...it's been a long time since I've been this psyched about a book. Probably not since Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin have I found myself wanting to tell everyone I know to 'read this book!'.

I got the book Friday afternoon. I didn't get a chance to sit and read until mid-afternoon, and even then I had lots of distractions (three dogs and a toddler will do that, you know).

But I quickly got caught up in the story: set in the seventies, 1959, and the present day, it's a story of a journalist attempting to write the story of a Martin & Lewis-like comedy team, torn apart by a Fatty Arbuckle-like criminal event (how old do I sound right now?). She gets caught up by the charms (and the potential dangers) of these men, and manages to solve a fifteen year old murder.

Holmes somehow convincingly writes like a woman. I mean, I'd stop to grab a drink of water or to shift one of the dogs sleeping on me, and think 'how does he do it? it totally sounds like a woman!'.

I was interested, so very along for the ride, that I was reading the book during commercial breaks for Stargates: SG-1 and Atlantis, as well as Battlestar Galactica. I then stayed up to finish it...and was so in love with this story, so eager to find out what happened, that when I closed the book, it was 6:06. AM.

I had no idea. I mean, sure; I was rubbing my eyes. I was tired. But I wasn't going to bed till I read the whole thing. I just hadn't realized it was so late...err, early.

But I was so in awe, so amazed with this book...I almost couldn't sleep.

I'm not sure how the sneeze-and-you'll-miss-it film version compares, although it's already in our Netflix queue (like we ever have time to go to the movies!), but this book?

You have to read it.

It grabs you, and you read faster and faster, to find out what's next.

One of the (many) best parts? Unlike a lot of other books, I never saw the end coming. The 'whodunnit' was a complete surprise, as were a couple of completely believable twists. I am in love with this book. I hope you like it even half as much as I did.

(I'm deliberately not saying much about it, so you'll be surprised)