Crooked Little Vein: A Novel (P.S.) (Paperback)

by Warren Ellis (Author)
Key Phrases: shit magnet, Crooked Little Vein, White House, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
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.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly
At the start of this dark, demented fiction debut from Ellis, the creator of DC Comics' Transmetropolitan and The Authority, the U.S. president's heroin-addicted chief of staff hires 25-year-old Lower East Side PI Mike McGill to find the other Constitution. This is a secret document privately authored by several of the Founders detailing the real intent of their design for American society, which a debauched vice-president Nixon lost in the '50s. With half a mill in black ops money, Mike hires cute tattooed Trix Holmes to be his guide to America's deviant underworld, whence the 50-year-old cold trail begins. In their search for the missing document, reputedly bound in the skin of the extraterrestrial entity that plagued Benjamin Franklin's ass over six nights in Paris, the pair make some wild pit stops in Columbus, Ohio; San Antonio, Tex.; Vegas; and, finally, L.A. The home of the free and the land of the brave has rarely looked so creepy in this snappily paced homage to William Burroughs's Naked Lunch. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (July 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061252050
• ISBN-13: 978-0061252051
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (68 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #63,086 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The emperor has no clothes... literally..., September 29, 2007

By	Chris B "zerocard13" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crooked Little Vein: A Novel (Hardcover)

The more I think about the book, the less I like it. It was a quick read and I enjoyed reading it, to be sure, but as I think on it, there really isn't much going on there.

Take away the fetishes and you're left with an ostensible mystery in which the heroes are handed the exact clue they were looking for at the right time without any real pitfalls or dead ends. It's well written, but that's not enough to disguise a plot that is little more than very kinky ride at Disneyland: it may appear dangerous and edgy at first glance, but really you're on rails for a guided tour. "The Godzilla fetishists are chasing us! Whew! That was close, wasn't it?"

Not even close. Our Heroes move from plot point to plot point without any sense of tension or dread, just an ever diminishing sense of shock.

I'm glad I read it, I guess, but I wouldn't exactly want to recommend it to anyone else.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dark, strange novel with some great writing..., September 9, 2007

By	Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Crooked Little Vein: A Novel (Hardcover)

I figure that someone recommended this title to me, as it's not the type of book I would normally pick up on my own... Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis. I don't think I'd necessarily say it was the best novel I've ever read, and I'd be cautious to recommend it to someone due to its very raw nature. But in terms of creative and unique writing style, this ranks right up there.

The story involves Michael McGill, a struggling private investigator in New York, who is described as a "s..t magnet". Because of his unwanted ability to turn up in situations involving the seamy, ugly part of human activities, he's hired to track down a special book. The book is an alternative Constitution to be used if and when the original version stops influencing society. A whacked-out chief of staff to the President brings him up-to-date on what the government knows, and McGill has to pick up the cold thread from there. Half a million dollars for expenses and a tattooed girlfriend with unique views on sexuality, and he's off on a cross-country trip that exposes him to practices and kinks that he didn't know existed. Along the way, he has to confront his ideas as to what is right and wrong, what should and shouldn't be allowed in a free society.

The book isn't overly long (280 pages in a format about 2/3 the page size of a regular book), so the read is quick. The language would give it an R rating from page 1 if this were a movie. And the kinky practices... These are some things I've never heard of nor imagined. What's scary is that a search of the internet confirmed that these things are truly fetish practices, complete with pictures (ewww...) There's a deeper message that Ellis is trying to convey (I think), but it's definitely not a message or philosophy that would mesh with my own. For me, the best part of the book was the writing. It's reminiscent of a dark 50's PI novel, only with a bizarre cast of characters and plenty of cynicism. His prior work involved graphic novels, so it doesn't surprise me that he is able to paint a scene with few words but an abundance of detail. If you can pull off a chapter that has a single sentence and have it work, you know your stuff...

Not a book to read if you're easily offended or looking for some action-adventure mind candy. But if you're wanting something out of the mainstream with some great writing, check it out...

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Loved it..., August 15, 2007

By	P. McGinty (Mesa, AZ) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Crooked Little Vein: A Novel (Hardcover)

...though it is embarrassingly short. By god, I've had bowel movements that lasted longer than it took me to read this book. And I'm a ponderous reader with a mightily efficacious GI tract.

A moment for a major qualm: Ellis seems a little too eager to, you know, really "push the envelope" of taste & co., and this novel--strike that, this novella--is rife with "lurid" and "in-your-face" descriptions of "unnatural" or "perverse" acts. The majority of this material is too obviously endweighted for shock effect. And I don't think that the modern reader really can be shocked, inasmuch as s/he wants to be. Instead, there's this niggling sensation that one is supposed to be shocked, that the author wants this reaction, and thus the reader is kind of slapped in the face with the artifice of the story.

Then again, cultural approbation and acclimation are underlying themes of this novella, as is the supervening relationship between culture and technology. More here than in any of Ellis' other works, you get the sense of an emerging thesis--that we are all of us only catching on to the possibilities of an ever-emerging world for which we are never fully prepared, etc.

There are approximately two people and one human relationship in the novel; everything else is a glorious cartoon, and to be taken as such. The two main characters--Mike the protag and his galpal Trix--are real enough for as short a story as this is. And because the book's so short, their relationship seems a little too fast. Ellis gets us from zero to love in about 240 pages; that's slower than Harlequin, but almost double the speed of mainstream chick lit. But we're not reading it for the romance, are we?

No, we're reading it because it's funny. This book is hilarious, and it assaults you, buffets you, stones and maims you with its wit and easy humor. Ellis' metaphors and Mike's misfortunes will have you laughing so hard that anyone within earshot will begin edging uneasily away. And the banter--granted, it feels so damned *written*, but you'll forgive it anyhow--the banter will tickle your soft parts hard.

If you're a fan of Ellis, you should already own this book. But so should anyone else looking for something wildly comic. And anyway, even if you don't like it, you won't have wasted more than a few hours of your disposable luxury time.