Gun Machine starts of violently and never gives the reader a chance to catch their breath. In a Manhattan apartment building, Detective John Tallow witness the murder of his partner by a broken naked man with a shotgun, and he responds in kind. In the early stages of his and and before the police arrived, the man had blown a hole into another apartment. After entering the apartment to look for any injured witnesses, Tallow finds himself surrounded by gun. Guns cover the walls, floor to ceiling. Each gun is connected to an unsolved NYC murder. There are no other signs of life.
When you boil it down, Gun Machine is a story about stories. There are the stories behind each individual gun found in the Manhattan apartment. There is a story behind every victim of the serial killer known only as "The Hunter" and then there is the story that they all tell when organized into the intricate patterns found on the walls of Apartment 3A. New York City itself can be considered a machine full of smaller automatons that constantly grind out story after story.
Ellis does a phenomenal job at telling these stories. He presents the reader with a deep, complex character in Tallow and develops him mainly through his dialog and actions. Instead of boring the reader with page after page of exposition, he lets each character grow naturally. Despite learning a almost nothing about Tallow or The Hunter's past, by the end of the story you feel like you've known them your entire life.
Gun Machine is a much more mainstream work than Ellis' previous novel, Crooked Little Vein, or his comic book work. That doesn't mean, though, that it is without his trademark wit or love of the obscure weirdness inherent in the human race. There are no movie theaters with Godzilla hands for sale or saline junkies to be found in these pages. Instead of hitting you directly over the head with the dark acts people do when alone, Ellis uses the police band radio to tell these stories. As off the wall as some of city's music may be, knowing Ellis there is truth to be found in every one of them.
Gun Machine is not perfect, but even my biggest complaint is fairly minor. The reader is presented with the grand mystery/conspiracy, but there is actually very little police work done. Tallow recognizes right away what he needs to do... work each case individually until you find what's missing - the killer. Do this for enough cases and eventually the shape of that missing piece will start to become clear. Unfortunately, the investigative plot seems to be driven forward more by wild leaps of faith and unexplained insights than by actual discovery. Tallow always seems to be a step ahead of where he should be, but not so far ahead that the threads of the book come unraveled. Additionally, I felt that The Hunter's chapters came a little bit to early and gave away too much too soon. I would have liked to have been in the dark just a while longer.
Overall, Gun Machine is another winner by Ellis and Mulholland Press. Fans of both Ellis and Crime fiction should find it to be a fairly quick but deep and entertaining read.
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