Haunting.
Creative Staff
Author: Richard Vine
What They Say
They were the New York art scene’s golden couple—until the day Amanda Oliver was found murdered in her SoHo loft, and her husband Philip confessed to shooting her. But was he a continent away when the trigger was pulled? Art dealer Jackson Wyeth sets out to learn the truth, and uncovers the dangerous secrets lurking beneath the surface of Manhattan’s posh galleries and decadent parties, a world of adultery and madness, of beautiful girls growing up too fast and men making fortunes and losing their minds. But even the worst the art world can imagine will seem tame when the final shattering sin is revealed…
This stunning debut novel from an editor of one of world’s leading fine art publications offers an insider’s tour of the New York and international art worlds, and a searing, unforgettable visit to the darkest chambers of the human heart.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I finished SoHo Sins a few days ago, but I needed to set it aside to think. This was one of those books where every statement I could make came with a caveat:
The book isn’t well written, but the story grips you.
The story grips you, but in a disturbing way: greasy and feverish.
I ultimately didn’t enjoy the book, but it haunts me.
Trying to put all that in a cogent assessment of the novel’s qualities takes some doing, and, frankly, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. What I can say definitively is that this is an affective book, and at the end of the day, I’d rather be affected than unengaged.
SoHo Sins is the debut novel of Richard Vine, a “prominent editor of one of the world’s leading fine art publications” as it says in the solicitation. It tells the story of Jackson Wyeth and the mystery of the death of his friend, Amanda Oliver. One morning Philip Oliver—Amanda’s estranged, soon-to-be ex, husband—discovered her body in the living room of their SoHo loft, sitting in her favorite chair, her face half caved-in by a bullet. Philip, suffering from a degenerative neurological disorder that affects memory, walks to the nearby police station and says, “I believe I killed my wife” in the same sort of tone one might use to order coffee.
So, pretty open-and-shut case, right? Well, not so much. See, at the time of the murder, Philip was across the country in California brokering a business deal. While it was in the realm of possibility that he could have travelled back to New York to do the deed and then travel back to California, the facts don’t support that. Thankfully, despite his impromptu confession, Philip’s lawyer gets him out of custody and hires a private investigator to discover whether his client did or did not shoot Amanda.
The private investigator, Hogan, luckily happens to be friends with Jackson Wyeth. He’s used Wyeth in the past to navigate the odd and dizzying world of the rich and debauched, and his closeness to both Philip and Amanda serves as a nice bonus. Together the two put together a list of suspects, each equally capable of doing the deed: was it Philip’s first wife, Angela? Was it Philip’s current lover, Claudia, whom he was leaving Amanda for? Was it Paul, Amanda’s most recent boy toy hiding a dark secret? Was it Philip’s daughter, Melissa? Or was it Philip? Is this whole degenerative neurological disease an elaborate plot to get away with murder?
Like all good crime novels, the destination isn’t as important as the journey. This book focuses more on the world and the weird, stunted morality of its inhabitants than on clues. It’s not a puzzle to be put together (although it does possess that quality) but a play to be experienced. Vine takes the reader down the deep, dark rabbit hole of New York’s art scene—a world just as delirious, dangerous, and dizzying as faerie land. As a tour guide, Vine does an excellent job. Perhaps even too well, but while the story engages and stays with the reader, it’s not written well.
Most of the writing issues are really just first novel jitters. The book tells far more than it shows, especially in the first chapter, and it introduces vital information about characters in odd moments. One major bit of information about Wyeth is his functionless left arm, which was crushed in an art exhibit accident. That’s information we should receive the first time we meet Wyeth (literally page one, considering this is a first-person account), but we don’t learn it for some time. That’s an issue, but the odd thing about it is Vine does a great job of providing us that information. In one of moments of showing instead of telling, he shows us Wyeth’s useless appendage instead of just writing, “My left arm was useless—crushed in an accident.” Essentially, the timing was poor, but the execution strong.
In this novel, every strength comes paired with a weakness (the “but”s I started with), and perhaps the greatest example of this lies in how well Vine places us in this world. In Vine’s SoHo, the people walk the streets, adrift in a morally-bankrupt sea, deadened by abundance and decadence, looking for something to make them feel alive. The novel takes us down many dark paths, and there were times when it was difficult to keep up because every single character was irredeemably flawed and toxic, including the protagonist, Jackson Wyeth. Diving into the story was like plunging into fetid, cloudy water, and it was incredibly easy to lose one’s way in the murk.
Crime fiction deals almost exclusively with the dark night of the soul and it’s full of morally-compromised characters, but often they possess one redeeming quality: one nugget that keeps you interested. Even Max Allan Collin’s antihero Quarry possesses a skewed moral code. Vine doesn’t give us that. Arguably, Wyeth and Hogan are the two best people in the book, but even they fail in crucial moments—especially Wyeth—and that makes this difficult to read.
What also makes this work difficult to read, for me, is the direction it takes with Philip and Angela’s daughter, Melissa. Without going into too many details, Wyeth and Hogan use her to gain access to a den of underground underage pornographers. I don’t think I need to tell you why that’s disturbing, but it doesn’t stop there. About halfway through, the novel develops a definite Lolita vibe between Wyeth and Melissa, and Wyeth plays the Humbert Humbert part so well I felt sick being in his head.
These are all serious issues in terms of content and execution, and yet, and yet, I can’t get the story out of my mind. Despite all its flaws in style and execution, Vine did what every writer should strive for: he immersed me in the story. He captured a powerful atmosphere and expertly presented a flawed, twisted landscape of acrylics and brushes, of clay and steel, of murder and blood and innocence lost.
In Summary
Art doesn’t have to be nice. It doesn’t have to be pretty or moral or just. The goal of art is twofold: to tell us to wake up and to pay attention, and sometimes that requires a shock to the system. Even though I can’t decide how I feel about this novel, I can with certainty say that Vine created something that did make me wake up and pay attention. It was affective, and if that were the only criteria by which I judged art, then this would be an “A” without a doubt. But it’s not, so Dr. Josh gives this a….
Content Grade: B-
Released By: Hard Case Crime
Release Date: July 19th, 2016
MSRP: $15.98
