Review: SoHo Sins by Richard Vine
The nineties were the last golden age of New York City’s art scene: beautiful, decadent and overflowing with money.
Richard Vine knew it well, and his first and only fictional work sends an out-of-his-depth art dealer to SoHo’s underbelly to solve the murder of one of its biggest patronesses.
Thing is, her husband’s already confessed. So what’s not adding up?
Plenty.
There are few individuals in the modern art world with resumes as impressive as Richard Vine’s. The current senior editor for Art In America and one time editor for the Chicago Review has taught at some of the country’s most prestigious institutions and penned about a half dozen nonfiction books on everything from home winemaking to Post-Maoist art in China. The man normally rubs elbows with the likes of the most obnoioxiously effite PiBs in what passes for “art” in the blighted, godforsaken hellscape that is the postmodern period, so one can only imagine my surprise when I found out he’d written a novel for Hard Case Crime. The imprint launched in 2013, specializing in hardboiled pulp noir fare, complete with gorgeously painted retro-styled covers, and I highly suggest you check them out. Turns out Vine can get his hands dirty with the best of them, literarily speaking.
The story
“’Phillip and Amanda Oliver.’ That was how the art world had celebrated my friends for years, their names run together like the scientific term for a rare, vanishing species: the SoHo conjugal pair.”
In the 90s New York art world, they were the it couple; admired for their seemingly happy marriage and family, with their beautiful teenaged daughter Melissa attending a top-notch private school. Courted by anyone who was anyone for a donation, a sponsorship or a gala appearance, the world seemed to be their oyster. Our hero, art dealer Jackson Wyeth, is a close friend of theirs who knows his old friend Phillip is a notorious rake and has his eyes set on a voluptuous Brazillian painter half Amanda’s age. Although their marriage is tumultuous, with plenty of behind the scenes fighting, reconciling and legal maneuvering, Jackson always knew his old chum Phillip would, in the end, do right by his wife, no matter how bad things got.
Then she was found in their apartment with her head blown off, and Phillip walked into the nearest police precinct and told the first cop he met he thinks he did it. Except Phil’s been diagnosed with a degenerative brain disease, and while he’s still got most of his marbles, it does throw anything he says into question. Jackson asks his best friend Ed Hogan, a retired cop turned private eye, to investigate the murder on behalf of Oliver’s lawyers. While each of them have witnessed the seedier side of human nature through their respective careers, what they wind up discovering shocks even them.
The characters
Vine’s SoHo is a sort of an upscale Sodom with a brownstone veneer. It’s populated by shallow old money and shallower young bohemians looking to sell or sleep their way into a hot exhibit. In our protagonists’ various trips around the Lower Manhattan cocktail party and studio circut, the reader will meet quite a few bitter divorcees, tarnished socialites and young artists with plenty of dirt under their manicured nails. Part of the greatest pleasure of this book is meeting them all and slowly sifting through the lies and half-truths along with the two main protagonists, so I won’t spoil to much about them. A brief on our crime-stopping duo is in order, though:
Jackson Wyeth is our narrator for this case, a successful art dealer who begins the book drinking himself to sleep as he struggles to come to terms with the news of his friend’s death. He’s still living with the weight of his own wife’s death a year prior. She was a stunning French artist who encouraged Jackson to take a more “European” approach their marriage, and while he reluctantly acquiesced to her relaxed fidelity, he never truly came to terms with it, either. He’s still haunted by her in his dreams, as well as guilt and anger over his cuckoldry. While he can schmooze with the suavest buyer, it is a world he tends to increasingly sees himself in, but not of.
He is contrasted almost entirely by his friend Hogan, the moral center of the novel. He’s a working class stiff who buys his suits off the rack, goes to Mass regularly and is still faithful to his wife of thirty years. He’s there to stick to the facts of the case, speak people’s motives plainly, and dispel any moral hedging when it begins creeping into Jackson’s thoughts. Where Jackson’s morality is decidedly gray, Hogan’s is as black and white as a badge on a police uniform. When it comes to art, he’ll take a Pieta over Piss Christ every time. Having little patience for what he sees as the empty moral grandstanding of the area’s upper class, he probes and questions the bevy of suspects with the stalking prowess of a boxer, waiting to find a weak spot in their story. At times he’s as affable as predatory, with shades of Columbo coming through whenever he works through his questionings.
Having Jackson with him helps to disarm each of the various potential suspects the two have to grill throughout the case. The pair make an unlikely partnering for a murder mystery, and their interplay was a breath of fresh air.
The world
While a year is not specifically given, it’s unmistakably 90s Manhattan; I came of age there, and Vine’s writing instantly transported me back to its streets. Saturday Night Live was hilarious, The Knicks were still great to watch and everyone had a little time to enjoy their pre-9/11 innocence. The city was clean, brimming with style, character and culture. A still-vibrant creative community is enjoying the warm golden rays of its final sunset before corporate cash floods its galleries and exhibits, zombifying it beyond recognition.
But it’s still New York City.
Wyeth and Hogan’s gumshoeing eventually takes them to the other side of the art scene’s tracks. Here, experimentation is high, envelopes aren’t pushed, their shredded, and there are plenty of people prowling for “models” (like Amanda Oliver’s daughter) to produce all manner of things that are far from legal. No matter how clean Giuliani got the streets, there were always rats in the sewers.
The politics
For a novel set in one of the most lopsidedly liberal places in the country, about one of the most decadent bastions of American epicureanism, Vine avoids politics wholesale. Even when Wyeth and Hogan are parsing the facts of the case between drinks, occasional jaunts into moral philosophizing don’t descend into hectoring. Wyeth often agonizes over his own shortcomings and lack of personal bravery, but at the same time uses it to drive himself deeper into the belly of the proverbial beast in search of redemption. For all of the opportunities there were for a lesser writer to use one of the story’s characters as an organ for champagne progressivism, Vine shows he’s talented enough not to give into the temptation.
Content warning
This being a crime novel very much in the pulp detective lineage, its only natural that various characters in it have secrets to guard. After all, among this set marital fidelity is treated as something quaint, and affairs are discussed openly among friends. A quasi-fatherly relationship Wyeth has with the buxom (but decidedly underage fifteen-year-old) Melissa early on slowly winds its way into a budding and uncomfortable sexual tension that you’ll want to brace yourself against. It’s a slow burn throughout the book, a constant temptation that tests Wyeth’s character. She's a girl who can act sweet and refined, but is hardly naïve, and one definitely gets the impression that her parents' strained marriage has left her more jaded and worldly than she lets on.
Later seeking a break in the case, Wyeth, suspecting he knows someone who’s connected to a child porn ring, at one point shows off legally dubious photographs in an attempt to gain their confidence. Luckily most of this is deftly gotten across in descriptions that paint an accurate picture while sparing the reader; the horrors of the book’s underground remain off page, instead focusing on backroom meetings and deals. The book contains almost no violence or even gunplay, save for some action at the very end. Vine’s focus is on crime and character, but action aficionados seeking a two-fisted tale still won’t be let down due to the taught mystery presented to the reader.
Who is it for?
Armchair detectives who love golden age pulp. I’ve been a big fan of Hard Case’s crime fiction from the beginning: they’re now owned by Titan Books, an independent UK publisher that still publishes their pulp titles along with graphic novels. They’re looking to reinvigorate the popularity of classic crime lit in the vein of Mike Hammer and Mack Bolan, complete with retro style covers. Vine’s addition to their catalogue fits the mold well, right down to the gorgeous cover by none other than Robert Maguire. Need some noir? Check out this imprint, starting with this book.
Why read it?
This book came out in 2016, and sadly seems to be the only fiction effort Vine has put forth so far. It’s a shame, because he absolutely nailed it, and I’ve wanted more since the moment I finished this title. Still, as I mention above, if you love a good mystery in the classic structure of golden era pulps, this is the book for you. It’s just got a fresh coat of modern day grit on it.