By: Warren Ellis Publisher: William Morrow Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: William Morrow Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 288 Publication Date: July 24, 2007 Release Date: July 24, 2007
Book Description: Michael McGill is a burned-out private detective who suddenly becomes enlisted by an army of presidential goons to retrieve the Constitution of the United States, but not the one we all know about. This would be the real Constitution (the one with invisible amendments) created by some of the Founding Fathers as a fallback for their great experiment. Along the way, McGill gains a polyamorous sidekick named Trix, gets scared to death by what men do with warm salty water, and descends into a world where crime, sex, and madness all seem to be the same thing.
Full of mind-bending style and packed with a wild cast of characters, Crooked Little Vein infuses Robert B. Parker with Kurt Vonnegut and the madness of the graphic-novel world. A surprisingly surreal treat, it will appeal to hardcore comic fans, mystery aficionados, and all readers looking for a riotous summer reading adventure.
Sample Chapter One of Crooked Little Vein
"Chapter One. I opened my eyes to see the rat taking a piss in my coffee mug. It was a huge brown bastard; had a body like a turd with legs and beady black eyes full of secret rat knowledge."
Crooked Little Vein puts you right in the gutter from the first sentence and doesn't let up. Sample the goods with a look at the complete first chapter, and see if you don't get hooked.
Product Description:
Burned-out private detective and self-styled shit magnet Michael McGill needed a wake-up call to jump-start his dead career. What he got was a virtual cattle prod to the crotch, in the form of an impossible assignment delivered directly from the president's heroin-addict chief of staff. It seems the Constitution of the United States has some skeletons in its closet: the Founding Fathers doubted that the document would be able to stave off human nature indefinitely, so they devised a backup Constitution to deploy at the first sign of crisis. In the government's eyes, that time is now, as America is overgrown with perverts who spend more time surfing the Web for fetish porn than they do reading a newspaper. They want to use this "Secret Constitution" to drive the country back to a time when civility, God, and mom's homemade apple pie were all that mattered.
The only problem is, no one can seem to find it . . .
So who better to track it down than a private dick who's so down-and-out that he's coming up the other side, a shamus whose only skill is stumbling into every depraved situation imaginable?
With no lead to speak of, and no knowledge of the underground world in which the Constitution has traveled, McGill embarks on a cross-country odyssey of America's darkest, dankest underbelly. Along the way, his white-bread sensibilities are treated to a smorgasbord of depravity that runs the gamut of human imagination. The filth mounts; it is clear that this isn't the kind of life, liberty, or happiness that Thomas Jefferson thought Americans would enjoy in the twenty-first century.
But what McGill learns as he closes in on the real Constitution is that freedom takes many forms, the most important of which may be the fight against the "good old days." Like Vonnegut, Orwell, and Huxley before him, Warren Ellis deftly exposes the hypocrisy of the "moral majority" by giving us a glimpse at the monstrous outcome that their overzealous policies would achieve.
Liked it better the first time I read it... ...when it was called Transmetropolitan.
Ellis is plowing the same field again. The Faithful rejoice, everyone else can sort of shrug and move on. You have seen this before.
Yes, it's all high madness with political commentary and big helpings of extra-kinky weirdness thrown in. But it's all very _very_ familar if you've read Ellis' previous stuff. (I actually stopped once to compare a passage with something in one of my Transmetropolitan trades. The sense of "I know I've read this before" was, at times, very strong indeed.)
This book will get a zillion rave reviews and will sell very well. Ellis has a large fan base with a devotion level akin to hard-core Trekkies or the KISS Army who will eat up whatever he flings at them. And ask for seconds and thirds.
The rest of us can just wait until Ellis decides to do something new and interesting again. And hope it doesn't take much longer.
Subversive counter-culture satire of detective genre -- great fun! Having read some of Ellis's graphic novels, I knew to expect a richly imagined urban landscape filled with the extremes of human behavior, and I wasn't disappointed. By utilzing the genre roadmap of the detective novel, Ellis is able to give free reign to his wonderfully absurdist digressions and outre secondary characters without losing sight of story and character considerations. It's a fun and fast read full of laugh-out-loud one-liners and hip criticism of mainstream culture, politics, and media. I await Ellis's next novel with enthusiasm.
A disturbingly shocking journey into the limits of bad taste. I wasn't familiar with any of Warren Ellis' previous work before reading "Crooked Little Vein". Over the years, Ellis has cut a large figure in the field of comics, establishing himself as a preeminent writer. He also has a reputation for being outrageous and for seeing how far he can push the envelope of bad taste.
Well, "Crooked Little Vein" doesn't disappoint, nor contradict this reputation in the least; if anything, it furthers it. The book is stunningly outrageous, incredibly filthy and vile, and wickedly over the top. This humorous descent into the depravity of the American underbelly feels like frolicking in a gutter and splashing oneself with filth. And I loved every minute of it.
Mike McGill is a private dectective who tends to be a magnet for some bizzare situations, and that is putting it nicely. He is hired by a government official to find the real Constitution of the United States. This leads Mike to a disturbing journey across America, where he experiences all types of depravity like fans who enjoy Godzilla movies a little too much sexually and individuals who inject their nether regions with saline. Unfortunately, this is about as far as I can go into the story without you having to wash your eyes out afterwards. Oh yes, it is disturbed and profane.
"Crooked Little Vein" is essentially a montage of disturbing set pieces held together by McGill's overall search for the Constitution. Ellis has an amazing gift to write scenes that would surely make you queasy if you weren't laughing so hard. So it goes without saying, if you are faint of heart about the use of profanity, scatological and perverted sexual references and other general foulness, you'll really want to avoid this novel. However, if you want to read something incredibly disturbing and not run-of-the-mill, this is must read material.
The book is brief and can be read in a few hours, so it mostly maintains its shock value, but the outrageousness of it does start to wear thin by the end. Ellis' writing style is simple and straightforward. His descriptions are stark, which makes the foulness that Mike uncovers even more horrifying. This is a new genre Ellis is plumbing here: perverted noir. And it is the level of depravity that Ellis is able to pull off that makes this novel incredibly entertaining.
Last Word: "Crooked Little Vein" is a fast, fun read that revels in its perversion and outrageousness, and full of shocking scences that are unforgettable. Warren Ellis has crafted a tiny little treat that will bring a smile to those who want to see how far bad taste can be pushed. Because in the hands of Ellis, bad taste can be pushed amazingly far.
Not Free SF Reader Sex and politics.
This book didn't seem to have the bite of some of Ellis' other work, for reason, perhaps because it was his first shot.
Your usual down on their luck private investigator is given a lot of money to go and investigate where a secret early constitution has gotten to.
Hired by a drug abusing political type, he then gets to go a sex tour and encounter everything from baby jaysus bumplugs to multiple spoofshooters while watching giant monster wearing fetishists.
Needless to say, the woman he meets along the way is rather different.
warren ellis is awesome a great quick read with a good ending and endearing protagonists. if you haven't read warren ellis before, i recommend starting with transmetropolitan. if you have, then this book is a must read. it was short enough to be read in a day, but long and memorable enough to be easily worth the money.
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