Review: Crooked Little Vein

On Saturday, I picked up Warren Ellis' brand new novel, Crooked Little Vein. I started reading it Saturday afternoon and practically devoured it that evening. I did finally have to force myself to go to bed with 50 pages left to go. But, it just happens that that is a perfect place to stop, if you have to, because its almost the exact moment that the final bit of action happens. So, I was able to come back, refreshed and ready to be wowed.

It's the story of down-on-his-luck, "shit magnet," Mike McGill. A private detective, for whom nothing goes right. Ever. This makes him the perfect man for the US government. They need him to find a certain, secret book. With his "can do and don't give a fuck" attitude, they know they can rely on him to do the job without asking too many questions. So, to find the book, he'll have to travel across the country and meet some sick, twisted and different types of people in some of the strangest and seediest places in America.

And then there's Ohio. You'll have to read about Ohio for yourself.

So, yeah, I liked it. It was, pretty much*, everything I'd hoped it would be. It was funny. It was seriously twisted. It was exciting. And, as I alluded to above, it was a hell of a page turner. It was, I guess, just what you'd expect from Warren Ellis. Only without pictures.

Now, I can't, in good consciousness, recommend it to, say, my mother, but I would recommend it to my friends and the general public-at-large.


* yes, I did have one problem with the book. Nothing that took away from my enjoyment of it, but it was just kind of a hole in the plot that kept nagging at me. So, here's my problem. The government hires a private detective to find a book that's gone missing for several years. They say the trail's gone completely cold, which is why they need him to track it down. But, they have TONS of leads, which they feed to the main character, which leads him, with very little trouble**, directly to the book! I just seemed like, if you looked at it that way, they really didn't need him at all.

** actually, there's a lot of trouble for the main character, but he pretty much brings it on himself. That's where a lot of the entertainment value comes in.