Richard Vine (2)

Contemporary novel of a murder in New York's art world. Kind of a long one for this imprint, and an odd one in that there's a lot of social commentary mixed in with the murder. As these things go, most of the social commentary is not very approving, and none of the characters are presented positively; it's a very unpleasant group of people.

The narrator owns an art gallery in Soho, and has deep connections to the art world. He has lots of skeletons in his closet, as do others. When a patron's current wife is murdered, the patron confesses to the murder, though he doesn't remember it. He's suffering from a strange mental disease. Suspicion centers on his ex-wife, and his current girlfriend, among others. I got a tad disappointed in the book, as it got towards an area that pisses me off, though the author recovered and made it work. If you can see the ending coming a little, that's the way these things go, and the author brings it all round nicely.… (more)

Over the past two years, Lili Almog has photographed minority women in the countryside, small cities, and villages of China. In her second powerHouse monograph, The Other Half of the Sky, Almog examines these women at a time when the demands of rapid growth and a sweeping desire for modernity is encroaching upon the traditions and values that have sustained their cultures as intact microcosms in the larger picture of China for centuries. Almog focuses on minority women, with an emphasis on the extraordinary situation of Muslim women in China, as well as the Mosuo women, a unique ethnic minority living within the boundaries of western China and one of the last matriarchal societies existing in the world.

The images in The Other Half of the Sky reflect how the communist revolution, with its vision of the nobility of physical labor and emphasis on gender equality, left its mark on women's and personal identity in a changing China. The book tells the story of the women of today's China, of their individualism in their domestic and work environments, and of minority women that have only recently been exposed to modernity. Given the nature of today's Chinese society and the conflict between the private self and society, The Other Half of the Sky presents a portrait of the public female representation as a challenge to express the dignity and heroism of the private, intimate female self.… (more)

SoHo Sins is the latest novel from Hard Case Crime. Like other novels
from Hard Case, it is a story of murder, depravity, cruelty, jealousy,
and more. It is, however, very much unlike most of the Hard Case
catalog. It does not harken back to fifties-era pulp fiction. It does not
feature petty criminals, card sharks, or drifters who somehow get
caught up in something more than they bargained for. Rather, the
story centers around the uber-wealthy elite of the Manhattan art
galleries, of the cyber-tech bubble of the late nineties, of sojourns in
Paris, and high-end prep schools.

It is a world of broken marriages, of young Italian mistresses, of
cocktail parties, of slow deaths from AIDs, Cancer, Brain damage,
broken arms, and more.

The tone and the pace of this novel are unlike much of what you find
in pulp fiction. It is narrated in an introspective, confessional manner
by someone who has lived a full life and can now look back on these
events from a distance. And, unlike many pulp novels, the pace is not
a frenetic cross-country chase, but a slow building of tension.
There's murder to be sure, and there's an investigation, but a slow
methodical inquiry by a criminal defense investigator for a confessed
murderer who has literally lost his mind, accompanied by the narrator
who knows all the parties involved and is himself involved with all the
players.

As the novel progresses, there are portions that will probably make
you uncomfortable- portions that are extremely creepy in a Lolita-fashion. That's part of the shock value.

Overall, this novel fits well into the Hard Case lineup, although it is
longer and more introspective than most crime novels. It is a
psychological portrait of a world of wealth and self-absorbed
decadence of the SoHo art world. The more you look inside the rabbit
hole, the darker and more sinister it all becomes.
… (more)