Thanks to barnesandnoble.com for this book cover image.

CROOKED LITTLE VEIN

WILLIAM MORROW
AUTHOR: Warren Ellis
ISBN: 978-0-06-072393-4; paperback; Fiction
288 pp., 5” x 7¼,” $21.95

This summer acclaimed comic book writer Warren Ellis (The Authority, Orbiter, and Transmetropolitan, to name a few) makes his debut as a novelist with Crooked Little Vein, a sweetly brutal private eye tale packaged in a slim volume.

When a strange little man claiming to be the Chief of Staff of the President of the United States walks into his wreck of a life, New York private investigator Michael McGill finds himself unable to say “No” to the stranger’s request.  Apparently, the Founding Fathers wrote a Secret Constitution of the United States.  Consider it a fallback document just in case they needed to repair their grand experiment.  Bound as a small leather book, only one copy exists, and it’s been lost for decades.  McGill’s new client wants it back, and he’s willing to pay Mike a big upfront fee to find it.

Early in his search, McGill (a kind of bitter pragmatist) lands a sidekick/assistant, a truly sexually liberated student named Trix Holmes.  Together Mike and Trix travel a crooked little vein across America meeting a riotous cast of characters and going where crime is just business, lunacy is mere folly, and when it comes to sex – any, anything goes.

THE LOWDOWN:  I’m sure many comic book fans wondered if Warren Ellis could pull this off.  As a comic book writer, he’s worked with many talented artists, so while his scripts have been quite good, he’s often had equally skilled and gifted visual collaborators.  That has allowed him to focus and hone a unique brand of caustic and witty dialogue that shapes, forms, and defines characters, making each and every one of them likeable, interesting, or engaging (good guy, bad guy, or one-scene nobodies).  Through blithe chatter, amusing conversation, and momentous tête-à-têtes, Ellis colors his stories, easily establishing atmosphere and mood that make even his minor works (if there is such a thing) memorable compared to many other comics creators’ work.

Yes, he does pull off the novel.  Crooked Little Vein is a surprisingly delightful and entertaining mystery novel that’s more than just a detective story.  Occasionally an off-kilter, dangerous, screwball romance, Crooked Little Vein finds a private eye and his gal looking through America’s underground and finding that much of it is now aboveground.

Through Mike and Trix, Ellis does a lot of talking about American politics, esoteric history, culture, assorted trivial matters, and once again sex.  As a detective novel, Crooked Little Vein has moments that are as edgy and treacherous as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, or as ruthless as Jim Thompson.  Like these crime fiction writers did decades ago, Ellis sends his American P.I. and his readers into places ritzy and ratty – wherever the dark things are.  These elements make this an auspicious prose debut for a comic book writer.

FOR READERS OF:  If Eli Roth (Cabin Fever, Hostel) and Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en, 8mm) had a go at The Maltese Falcon, they might get within (literally) spitting distance of Crooked Little Vein.  Seriously though, this book has a flavor like Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins books.  Like Rawlins, Mike McGill is as a savvy, hard-luck scrapper on cases that take him across the socio-economic spectrum, and danger lurks over its entirety.

Shop Crooked Little Vein at my Amazon aStore.