WHODUNIT? HE DID ALLOFIT WRITER RUPERT HOLMES MIXES MUSIC, MYSTERY.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

Rupert Holmes loves to keep audiences - readers and listeners alike - continually guessing.

We're talking about the man who has snaked his way around whodunit plays like ``Accomplice'' and ``Solitary Confinement.'' He's also won a trio of Tony awards for finishing - and adding music to - Charles Dickens' final novel, ``The Mystery of Edwin Drood'' by allowing the audience to vote on the ending ... and then double-crossing them anyway.

Holmes, a veritable renaissance man of mystery, also has garnered a pair of Edgar awards from the Mystery Writers of America. His first mystery, ``Where the Truth Lies,'' is being made into a movie with Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth. His newly released follow-up is ``Swing,'' a noir-ish, 1940s story set among the world of big-band musicians at the Golden Gate International Exposition. His de facto gumshoe is a jazz saxophonist and orchestra arranger named Ray Sherwood, and the novel comes with a CD of original songs and music - referenced in the book - that contain clues to the mystery.

``I've learned from writing in so many different kinds of platforms and genres,'' says Holmes, 58, ``that each one has its appeal to me. Each has something that I can do in that genre that you just can't do in other genres. When I had the audacity to think I could finish what Charles Dickens couldn't get to, I immediately understood that it would work best as a musical and that it would need to have the sense of fun and carnival- like atmosphere in which the audience could actually get to see a new ending put up custom-tailored. You can't do that in a movie, and it's not as much fun in a novel.''

Did we mention that Holmes is also a Grammy-winning musician who has arranged for Barbra Streisand and released nearly a dozen albums? Of equal fame - or infamy, depending upon your leanings - is his contribution to 1970s pop immortality with ``Escape (The Pina Colada Song)'' in 1979. He has also written for television (the series ``Remember WENN'') and scored films.

``I think he's a genius,'' says Jonathan Karp, editor in chief at Random House, which published both ``Where the Truth Lies'' and ``Swing.'' `No matter what he's writing, there's always a twist. There's always great humor and intrigue, and the reason he's so good is that he cares deeply about the audience's experience and yet he has enough artistry to make it all original and fresh. That's the mark of a great craftsman.''

Holmes comes by all his interests honestly. He's the son of an alto sax player and his brother is an opera singer. He grew up listening to the Beatles, Bob Dylan and 78s of Count Basie, and reading the mysteries of Erle Stanley Gardner and Ellery Queen - the latter because Queen, like Holmes, wore glasses.

For ``Swing,'' Holmes mined his father's stories of life spent on the road as well as his own interests in orchestrating for big-band sounds.

The novel also contains more personal connections to its author. The divorced and lonely Ray Sherwood has resigned himself to a life on the road in part to escape a painful memory: the accidental death of his young daughter. The novel is dedicated to the author's own daughter, Wendy Isobel Holmes, who died of a brain tumor in 1986 at age 10. ``I think the analogy would be that, if you experience the horrors of war, as an artist, when you encounter something so unspeakably dreadful, you decide to make something positive or touching out of it,'' Holmes says. ``That will mean it doesn't completely overwhelm me. Instead, I still have a little bit of control over what fate has dealt me.

``I also wanted to give some life to that lost child as best I can. I don't have the power to give life to anything, but I can at least do it within the covers of a novel.''

Setting his novel entirely in the Bay Area - but without a single San Francisco location - Holmes, in conducting his research, found himself drawn back to places he had headlined as a performer more than 25 years ago. And while he has resisted the temptation to sit in with any jazz or big-band sets, Holmes still nurses a secret, unfulfilled musical desire.

``It's a lifelong quest. I want to go somewhere where they're having a karaoke night (competition) and have them do 'Escape.' I want to go up there, and sing it, and lose.''

Like we said, he keeps 'em guessing.

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

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Rupert Holmes' newest mystery, ``Swing,'' comes with a CD of music that contains clues. It's a style befitting a man who turned ``The Mystery of Edwin Drood'' into a smash musical.