The Selling of Bohemia follows a group of young artist friends in Brooklyn struggling to live la vie boheme. The protagonist, Malcolm Roth, is a writer and lecturer at Columbia on a Diogenesian quest for the mythological love he has been deluged with in film, on television and in novels for most of his life. He decides to catalog this quest and the lives of his friends as one, Jackie, a singer and soon lover, stands on the precipice of fame. When a second member of the clan is murdered within six months, Malcolm becomes the lead suspect to the crime and must find the killer to save himself.