The story is set in 1940 during the Golden Gate Exposition on Treasure Island and manages to squeeze in several East Bay gems, such as the Claremont Hotel, Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon, the Campanile, Lake Merritt, Sweet's Ballroom and the Oakland Tribune tower.

The native New Yorker, who traveled back to the Bay Area for interviews and a reading at "M is for Mystery" bookstore in San Mateo Friday night, admits he fell in love with both cities.

"I am so fond of the setting of the book," he said, confessing he keeps finding excuses to come back. "I fell in love with the area.... San Francisco gets all the play, San Francisco is the capital of private detectives, but Treasure Island is as close as I venture to San Francisco in this book. A couple of (characters) claim to live there, but that's it."

Holmes spent a heavenly week holed up at the Claremont, just like protagonist Ray Sherwood, a troubled saxophone player in a big band orchestra who falls for a mysterious UC Berkeley student who has asked him to arrange a piano composition she wrote into an orchestral piece for the exposition.

"I stayed at the Claremont, I went to Lake Merritt; I love that lake," he said. "We in New York think Central Park is a big deal, but that is a lake."

There is a murder from the nearly 400-foot-tall spire Tower of the Sun on Treasure Island. Was the mysterious student somehow involved? Like clues hidden in a painting, a la "The Da Vinci Code," "Swing's" clues are hidden in the Swing-era musical lyrics written, recorded and sung by Holmes. A music CD is included in every book, and lest you jump ahead of the plot, better start reading first, he warns.

There are a couple of reasons why Holmes chose Oakland and Berkeley. He's been intrigued by Treasure Island and the World's Fair ever since seeing the movie "Charlie Chan at Treasure Island." (He said he thought it would be about pirates and buried treasure). He vowed then and there he would include the exposition in a book.

He also always wanted to write about the Swing era and big bands, and since the exposition was happening during the genre's heyday, and just a hop, skip from the fabulous Sweet's Ballroom, ground zero for be-bop and Lindy Hop, the plot lines merged.

Holmes' dad performed in a big band, at the Claremont Hotel in fact. Holmes grew up listening to all the greats of the era as well as his dad's stories about what it was like to be on the road.

Holmes didn't set out to record music to go with the book, but when his publisher asked, it wasn't really a stretch. After all, he's a musician, recording artist, arranger and composer.

Holmes' first mystery novel, "Where the Truth Lies," has just been made into a movie starring Colin Firth, Kevin Bacon and Alison Lohman, and apparently "Swing" has enough twists and turns to keep everyone guessing.

And no doubt local readers will be flipping those pages searching for their favorite haunts. "We go to the First and Last Chance Saloon, we ride the ferries, Grizzly Peak enters into it; watch out for those turns in the road," Holmes warns with a laugh.

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