Bound Up With Books: Crooked Little Vein

In honor of the paperback release of Warren Ellis’ Crooked Little Vein: A Novel, that’s what I’m reviewing this time around. I loved this book. My only complaint is that is was too short…I read it in one day, and that’s just not enough of this sick, twisted and brilliantly funny book. I loved it from the moment the rat pissed in Mike’s coffee to the moment when…well…that would be telling, wouldn’t it?

The basics: Mike McGill is an independent P.I. Since his cases somehow always end up being worse than anyone wants to deal with, involving the kinds of scandal that will garner not glory, but shame and disgrace for anyone even remotely involved, his business is not flourishing. So, now he lives in his office with only the rat for company. Until one fateful morning, the U.S. Chief of Staff comes to him with a proposition: Find the *other* Constitution, the secret book that used to keep the country pure and on track. It was traded back in the 50′s to a Chinese prostitute to procure the kind of illicit joy that mere money cannot buy. Or so one would guess – this is one place where the favors traded for the book aren’t specified. And given what we do learn about the trading history of the book, that makes one wonder…

Mike, of course, wants nothing to do with the case. He’s a ‘shit magnet’ even in cases where shit shouldn’t oughtta be. In a case like this – well, it hardly bears thinking about, does it? Refusal isn’t an option, however – so (half a million richer) off he goes to find the fetishistic object that will “save the country from itself.” It’s every bit as bad as he expected it to be. On the other hand, it’s also a lot better. He meets Trixie, for one, who becomes his partner/assistant. The question is, can he accept the good? Can he accept the manner in which the good grows along aside the bad, so to root out the one just might destroy the other? Considering just how bad the bad can get, it might be a little hard to remember.

This is a charmingly (for a given value of ‘charming’, of course) loving satire of the hard-boiled noir detective novel. There’s a bit of twisted affection for the US, also – in the form of Mike and Trixie themselves and the various freaks they meet. Not all of them, of course – there are some deviants for whom the only proper response is pop-eyed retching and a blowtorch.

Metaphorically speaking, anyway.

It made me laugh, it made me moue in disgust. It didn’t change my life, but it did provide an entertaining afternoon. The paperback also has some ‘special features’ including (eeek!) In the Kitchen with Warren Ellis. You have been warned.