Book Review: Gun Machine by Warren Ellis

Gun Machine

Written by: Warren Ellis

Published: 2013

Synopsis: After a shootout claims the life of his partner in a condemned tenement building on Pearl Street, Detective John Tallow unwittingly stumbles across an apartment stacked high with guns. When examined, each weapon leads to a different, previously unsolved murder. Someone has been killing people for twenty years or more and storing the weapons together for some inexplicable purpose.

Confronted with the sudden emergence of hundreds of unsolved homicides, Tallow soon discovers that he's walked into a veritable deal with the devil. An unholy bargain that has made possible the rise of some of Manhattan's most prominent captains of industry. A hunter who performs his deadly acts as a sacrifice to the old gods of Manhattan, who may, quite simply, be the most prolific murderer in New York City's history.

Challenges: Published in 2013 for Book'd Out's Eclectic Reader Challenge
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Warren Ellis has a very special place in my heart. He is 100,000,000 times greater than every other comic book writer that has ever lived or ever will lived, he came at a point in my life when I had run out of HST books and needed a brutally honest, brutally hilarious, brutally mental writer to fill the HST sized gap, he constantly challenges himself and the comic industry (for example, his comic SKV which uses invisible ink) and his series Transmetropolitan (seriously the greatest comic series you will ever read) was the first book Tom lent me and an integral part in my desire to keep seeing him, i.e. keep getting volumes of Transmetro for free. Lucky for Tom it turned out I actually liked the lender as much as the lended (cue fireworks and chirping blue birds with big cartoon eyes and other junk that signifies love). So yes, needless to say, I like Warren Ellis, I like his stuff and I'm usually pretty flippin' quick to buy it as soon as it's advertised.

It's pretty difficult, nigh impossible for a comic writer to successfully transition into novels. Or at least it is without some pretty dismal failures littered along the way. Ellis's first novel, Crooked Little Vein (which I loved and reviewed here) was amazing because it captured the brashness and rapid fire attack of a comic narrative while also containing depth, fantastic pacing and Ellis's unique outlook on life. So again, needless to say I had pretty high hopes that Gun Machine would fall into line with the rest of his oeuvre.

90% of Gun Machine does live up to the Warren Ellis hype, but the other 10% has been niggling at me for weeks, making it virtually impossible to write this review. Ellis' go to genre seems to be crime/police procedural, but he typically approaches it in a way that avoids all the daggy tropes and pitfalls that the crime books my mum likes stumble over. Ellis' crime stories have an edge, perhaps it's supernatural, perhaps it's investigating fringe culture, or maybe it's using a protagonist who is an investigative gonzo journalist. Which ever he chooses he usually has a really good reason which both informs and is informed by the events of the novels, and there's just a real chunkiness to the whole thing. Like when you have a really hearty casserole for dinner and you feel full and satisfied and warm for hours afterwards. For the first time though I felt like there was a lack of connection and flow in Ellis' work.

His protagonist, John Tallow, is absolutely an interesting character. The book opens with Tallow and his partner turning up at a crime scene where a man was rampaging around the hallway of an apartment naked holding a gun. Things happen and the big naked guy ends up shooting Tallow's partner, killing him instantly. Along with ending the life of Tallow's much more loved and respected partner, the big guy blew a hole in the wall of a neighbouring apartment, thrusting Tallow into a whole new world of shit. The apartment is full of guns, guns which testing will show were each used for different unsolved murder cases. Without even getting a day to deal with the loss of his good friend and partner Tallow is put onto the case of solving this monster of a case. What we learn is that this case is basically considered a career killer. There are hundreds of guns, spanning hundreds of separate cases, with no fingerprints or DNA. It's going to destroy their district's stats and the chance of finding the culprit is considered close to impossible.

We don't get all the details right away, but it's becomes pretty clear that Tallow is apathetic about police work, he's "nine parts dead already". He has no desire to rise through the ranks or to make any conspicuous change in society. It's just a job, and a job which he puts the smallest modicum of effort into. He floats through it all, and at first you get angry for him when his now-dead partner's wife refuses to let him come to the funeral (she thinks it should have been him) or his boss treats him like dirt, but then you find yourself getting angry at him because he just doesn't care. It's frustrating, but it also makes for a very interesting read - are we going to see him fail as everyone expects him to? Is he going to have a meteoric rise to success? Does he actually care about anything? And why does he seem to care about so little?

What isn't so great (and this is where that 90-10 split first appears) is that along with this genuinely interesting character turmoil, there are these character quirks that just feel tacked on. Ellis' male protagonists are typically intelligent, messy and sarcastic men who drink dark black coffee like water and smoke like Humphrey Bogart (or at least they do in my mind). Most of that transfers over to Tallow's sardonic and apathetic persona with ease, but then you have things like Tallow's bibliophagism, which basically just involves the backseat of Tallow's cop car being covered in books and e-readers (because a lot of people have more than one?) and a snarky young CSU tech making a couple of quips about it. Sure there's a few lines about him reading up on the history of something or another, but does it really serve a purpose? Tallow could have been a devourer of New York history without having books falling out of his car and making up the legs of his coffee table.

Similarly the CSU techs, Scarly and Bat, are bordering on quirkly/creepy/weirdo cardboard cut-outs (a lesbian you say? Oh they have toys in their office? How novel!) of better Warren Ellis characters, but end up kind of awesome if only because they are everything the CSUs we see in crime shows  are not. And finally there is "the hunter", the guy who is actually behind all the killings, and who we unfortunately spend every second chapter with. He's interesting enough, and it was cool to be able to connect dots in the case before Tallow but I think he would have been infinitely more interesting if we only saw him through Tallow's eyes. We don't need an insiders view on everything, especially when there's an almost magical/supernatural quality to the case at times.

So whether it was the hunter's chapters, or the disconnection with some of the character construction or something larger in terms of narrative or pacing - something was just flat about this book. It's average in size, but it took 100 or so pages before I really got into the swing of things and even then I never felt the need to sit there and devour it as quickly as I could. This is unheard of for me with Warren Ellis, I am normally on board from the title page onwards, no doubts, no reservations. In saying all of this though, 99% of the actual writing was *kisses fingers like an Italian chef* bellisimo! It's sharp and expressive and caustic and it really just digs into the ills of society in a way that makes you feel squirmish and want to avoid looking into a mirror in direct light.

It was a grim gray thing, the squat building, a fossil husk for little humans to huddle in. Every other building on this side of the block had had, at the very least, dermabrasion and its teeth fixed. Two stood on either side of the old apartment building like smug botoxed thirty-somethings bracing an elderly relative. Many of them looked empty, but nonetheless there were flocks of young men in good suits and bad ties with phones nailed to their heads, and rainbows of angular women stabbing out texts with sharp thumbs. 

The shotgun blast from inside the old building made them all clatter away like flamingos.

There is no doubt that Warren Ellis can write, because holy crap he can write. Nor is there really any question of whether he can construct a story and characters, because he's done it superbly in the past. The question, I guess, is what it was he wanted this book to be? Was it a police procedural with a spin? Was it a look at the internal struggle of a tired cop? Was it about the lengths people are willing to go to make it in New York City? Is it about mental illness, or PTSD? Was it just a book to fill the demands of a publisher's contract so he could move on to projects he was more interested in?

It could be all those things, or none of them. It's unlikely to convert you to the church of Ellis if you aren't already a dues paying member but it probably won't turn you off either. It's interesting and has some fantastic moments once you get into the momentum of the story, but it probably won't linger with you afterwards. It isn't the best book I've read this year, but I'm still going to recommend it because I think there's enough in there to get an enjoyable read out of it and even if I didn't love it, I can't not recommend a Warren Ellis book. So read it, there are some seriously cool elements in it (the gun stuff is actually brilliant) and the writing is phenomenal and it's about to be made into a TV series, so there's that.

Graphic Novel Mini-Reviews

 American Vampire (Volume 1)
By Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque and Stephen King

Synopsis: This volume follows two stories: one written by Snyder and one written by King. Snyder's story is set in 1920's LA, we follow Pearl, a young woman who is turned into a vampire and sets out on a path of righteous revenge against the European Vampires who tortured and abused her. This story is paired with King's story, a western about Skinner Sweet, the original American Vampire-- a stronger, faster creature than any vampire ever seen before with rattlesnake fangs and powered by the sun.

My Thoughts: Twists to vampire lore can be done, as this graphic novel demonstrates over and over again. Screw diamond skin and vegetarianism, this graphic novel pits the traditional Euro vamps against the new, brash and a little trashy American breed. They can walk in sunlight, contact crucifixes and are drained of power by no-moon nights. There's raunch, revenge, power struggles and a sweet little writer who struggles to keep up. Plus, you know...Stephen King.

Black Gas
Written by Warren Ellis, illustrated by Max Fiumara and Ryan Waterhouse

Synopsis: A tiny little island off the east coast of America sit on a fault in the underlying tectonic plate. On a night beset by a fierce storm and an earthquake simultaneously, the fault line cracks, releasing something foul from the Earth's guts, blown across the little coastal town of Smoky Island. The only two people on the island who were outside the reach of the black gas are now trapped on a spit of rock with a population that aren't what we'd call "people" anymore. After all, they started eating each other an hour ago... and it's about to get worse.

My Thoughts: Meh. I usually adore Warren Ellis and hold him up as a personal god, but this was completely lacking his sparkling dry and twisted humour. The concept was solid, but the characters were infuriating (especially the girlfriend, oh how I hated her!) and the dialogue completely lack lustre. I really don't know what was going on in this one, but it's low on my list of recommends.

N.
Adapted from a Stephen King short story by Marc Guggenheim, illustrated by Alex Maleev.

Synopsis: There is something unearthly and mysterious deep in Acherman's Field in rural Maine. There is a Stonehenge-like arrangement of seven stones with a horrifying EYE in the center. And whatever dwells there in that strange, windswept setting may have brought about the suicide of one man...and harbor death for the OCD afflicted "N.," whose visits to the field have passed beyond compulsion into the realm of obsession.

My Thoughts: Now this is more like it! Stephen King's short story tackling compulsion and monsters and a stone henge like formation comes to terrifying life in this graphic novel. The illustrations were a bit of a let down at times, but for the most time they did what they were supposed to...emphasise the crap out of the horror story Stephen King spun and make me terrified to turn off my light! A definite must read if you like King, supernatural tales and graphic novels.

Top 10 Tuesday: 10 Graphic novels to read if you've never read one before.

Top 10 Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created here at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because we're particularly of lists here at The Broke and The Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top 10 lists.





I adore graphic novels, but when I look around the book blogs it seems that more often that not people seem to avoid them. I can understand why, it's a different way of reading, and if you aren't used to it, finding your way through the images and texts can be a little confusing or exhausting. But it's well worth a try. As I said, a  graphic novel is a very different reading experience to simply reading a book. You have to hunt through the pictures for the hints, emotion or subtext, and learn to read between the lines when the text and the image seem to be saying opposite things. It can be a real adventure, and lots of fun. And while creating a world in your head is always magical, sometimes it's nice to see that world in front of you, created by an extremely talented artist who can make you laugh or cry with a single image the size of a postage stamp. My world of imagination has opened up greatly since I've started reading graphic novels, and while I still read novels more often, there are graphic novels that make up some of my favourite reads of all time.

Below is a list of 10 (in no particular order) graphic novels that simply must be read. Most are very accessible for a first time graphic novel reader and several have been adapted from books or by traditional authors making them far easier to read that their comic author counterparts. Hopefully some of the artworks and descriptions below are enough to entice you to step into this wonderful world and experience something new and different from what you typically read. Enjoy!

1. Maus
If you ask for a graphic novel recommendation from a book fan you'll most likely be told to pick this one up, and for good reason. The story combines the biography of Vladek Spiegelman's survival during WW2 with his later life in America, as told by his writer/artist son Art Spiegelman. The dichotomy between the two time periods makes for an incredibly interesting story that must have been very difficult for Art to tell. Also, it's a little Animal Farm-y, with the Jews depicted as mice while the Germans are cats

2. The Great Gatsby

A graphic retelling of the marvellous Fitzgerald novel by the same name. The art is astounding in this graphic novel, it's made to look like a collection of old photographs collected in a photo album, and that sense of nostalgia is maintained through the entire story. The cast are depicted as sea creatures, which simply seems perfect for this story, don't ask me why. (my review)

3. From Hell 

Actually, just read anything by Alan Moore. He's a master graphic novelist, his other works including V For Vendetta, The League of Extraordinary Gentleman and Swamp Thing. From Hell is the graphic interpretation of the Jack the Ripper conspiracy that it stemmed from a royal cover-up. It's a fantastic tale of the hidden and the covered-up, that is guaranteed to send you on a google search to check the validity of this theory! 

4. 30 Days of Night 
There are actually quite a few of these out now, but the only ones you really want to read are the original three written by Steve Niles and illustrated by Ben Templesmith. The first book (the best) takes place in a small Alaskan town that suffers through 30 days of night each winter. This year they're attacked by a posse of vampires who intend to make the most of the wintery darkness. The artwork is what stands this series apart, Ben Templesmith is one of my favourite artists, his work blends photo-manipulation with intense colour and ethereal illustrations that render everyone slightly manic and monster-ish.

5. Transmetropolitan 
Eleven issues of pure brilliance. This is the graphic novel series of what it'd be like if Hunter S. Thompson was alive and reporting in the very messed up future. However, in Transmetropolitan he's known as Spider Jerusalem, a controversial journalist who hates pretty much everyone. Just as HST told the story in the most honest, hard-hitting, gratuitous and venomous ways possible, so does Spider. Thoroughly entertaining, mercilessly funny, and dangerously good.

6. FreakAngels 

Another brilliant Warren Ellis series, FreakAngels tells the story of a group of slightly strange kids who destroyed England. The illustrations are by the wonderful Paul Duffield, and the entire series is available FREE on the FreakAngels website. So you have no excuse not to go read it! (my review)

7. The Arrival 
There really is truth to the saying "a picture is worth 1000 words". Shaun Tan's beautiful graphic novel/picture book charts an immigrants journey to a new and magical land. Each page bursts with expressive, detailed sepia toned pencil drawings that will literally bring tears to your eyes. There is so much going on in each image that it doesn't matter than not a single word is included, the story is there for anyone to see.

8. The Five Fists of Science

Yes you're seeing right, that is Mark Twain in the picture yelling "SCIENCE!" while a giant robot and monster take up the background. Other characters in this cheeky little comic are Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison (as the baddy) and many more. It's a fun revision of our history that plays around with real life grudges and personality traits to create a monster of a story. (my review)

9. The Stand 

The Stand is probably my all time favourite Stephen King novel, and this graphic adaptation does it absolute justice. It's almost word for word with King's version, and the illustrations perfectly match up with the way King meticulously describes his characters. I haven't finished this series yet, but so far they've been perfect. They've maintained King's sharp wit, shaped the characters perfectly and done everything possibly to make sure that this series is a knock-out. They've got some talented men and women working on this, and it really shows. 

10. Pyongyang: A Journey to North Korea
Cartoonist Guy Delisle worked in North Korea for several months in 2001. This is the graphic diary he kept while he was there. It's unflinchingly honest of life as a Westerner within the propaganda and weapon rich North Korea, and his insights are frank, to the point and rarely embellished. It's an interesting look into a side of life we rarely see, and it's perspective on propaganda and censorship provides food for thought. (my review)

Review: SVK by Warren Ellis

SVK (graphic novel)
Written by Warren Ellis, illustrations by Matt 'D'Israeli' Booker

Published: 2011

Synopsis (via the SVK website) : First and foremost SVK is a modern detective story, one that Ellis describes as "Franz Kafka's Bourne Identity". It's a story about cities, technology and surveillance, mixed with human themes of the power, corruption and lies that lurk in the data-smog of our near-future.








I am a huge fan of Warren Ellis. I'll read anything that has his name attached and to be perfectly honest I doubt I could see anything he wrote as anything less than brilliant, even something as basic as a shopping list! That said, I solemnly swear that I'll be reviewing this graphic novel on it's merits, in terms of art, writing and the inclusion of new technology. There will be some minor spoilers, so if you're wanting to read this graphic novel sans spoilers I suggest you turn back now with only this...short by sweet and so worth a read.

So, for those of you willing to risk the spoilers or who already read the graphic novel I'll give you a bit of a background on the comic. SVK is an all new comic experience. Using invisible ink and a UV torch SVK gives readers and opportunity to see into the minds of the characters, to catch a glimpse at some of their secrets and their true reactions to other characters. As their website states "this graphic novel is about looking - an investigation into perception, storytelling and optical experimentation," and indeed it is. Both in terms of their use of invisible ink and the actual plot.

The brilliance of this comic is that it combines the new invisible ink technology into the storyline, rather than just having it attached as a gimmick. The story follows Thomas Woodwind (a Patrick Stewart lookalike...win!) as he is hired by the Heimdall security firm to track down one of their product developers who disappeared with one of their prototypes, SVK. Woodwind is offered a large sum of money and given the barest of instruction and heads off to retrieve the item. In the bad ass maverick way of all Warren Ellis protagonists Woodwind dodges Heimdall's tails (because he's so bad ass he needs people to keep watch of him) and meets up with his super nerd colleague Bulmer. From there they do some snooping and track down the prototype which turn out to be a set of contact lenses, which when inserted, do what the nifty UV torch does to your page...it allows the viewer to see the thought of the people around them.

So I won't go into more detail than that because I don't want to give away too much of the how and why, but I went into this much detail because I wanted to emphasise the brilliance of the story/media combination. By showing the thoughts via UV it emphasises that they aren't something you're supposed to see and it puts you into Woodwind's shoes. Can you imagine if they managed to create this sort of technology? As they say in the comic, imagine if they could tack this on to all the CCTV cameras that abound the streets of London. Faceless corporations constantly monitoring our every thought, perhaps under the guise of security but who'd stop them from using it for something more sinister? And as the comic shows with it's UV bubbles, people think things they shouldn't, perhaps by suggesting the person they're talking to looks like a rapist, perhaps by venting rage by saying they're going to 'kill' their uncle. More often than not it doesn't mean anything, but imagine what the cops would do if they saw their allocated keywords (kill, rape, hate, murder, die) come up on a CCTV screen with your face on it?

As usual the writing has a bite. Warren Ellis is caustic, quick and every word packs a punch. The illustrations are in black white and pale blue/grey (other than the UV of course) and simple but they work as a perfect compliment to both Ellis' writing and as a backdrop for the added UV. It's a short novella, but the story is filled with Ellis' usual social critique and develops the characters of Woodwind and Bulmer to perfection. Every graphic novel Ellis works on amazes me, because he manages to tell such intricate stories with such complex characters without a lot of exposition or unnecessary side-plots. It's to the point and leaves the reader in no uncertain mind as to what the novel is about and who the characters are. Fantastic!

In addition to the story, there are a couple of articles dotted through the comic that deal with aspects brought up in the book. Jamais Cascio discusses AR (augmented reality) contact lenses and what they'll mean to you and me, while Paul Gravett discusses thought and speech balloons in comics. They're interesting articles and don't get in the way of the reading experience. Because I flicked through the graphic novel before I began I noted where they were and made sure to flick right past them and carried on with the story, returning to them once I had finished. This isn't standard practice in graphic novels and comics but they're included because this comic is more than just a story, it's about changing the rules of comics and storytelling, and is almost an advertisement for this novel idea. Or perhaps like a panel at a writers or media festival.

SVK sold out it's first print run (woot, first edition yo!) but they're working on a second edition (it's expensive to print in UV ink as I'm sure you could imagine!) and I highly recommend getting your hands on a copy. Or, if you're a little light in the wallet situation convince a friend to buy a copy and borrow it from them! It's a great mystery, that delivers a wallop of a story with some fantastic bad ass characters and some frightening tech creations.

My rating: 4.5/5

Review: Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis

Crooked Little Vein
By Warren Ellis

Published: 2007

Synopsis (via Goodreads): A burned-out private detective is enlisted by an army of presidential goons to retrieve the U.S. Constitution...the real one. Following in the steps of Neil Gaiman, Crooked Little Vein is packed with action, adventure, and a wild cast of characters that are sure to appease not only hardcore comic fans, but a whole new slew of mystery readers waiting for a surprisingly surreal treat that infuses the madness of the graphic-novel world.


My god, I can't express how fantastically messed-up this book is, and how deliriously I devoured it.  I was a little worried before reading this (seems to be a bit of a theme recently) because not all comic writers are up to the challenge of a full-scale book but Warren Ellis did it with sickening style.

The book opens with a rat taking a piss in a coffee cup while the narrator, Mike McGill, Private 'Invest gator', drags himself through the doldrums of a morning routine with very little ease. Mike has an uncanny knack as a P.I and worked his way well up a private film before deciding to go solo. Ever since he's been plagued by the most revolting luck, he's a self-proclaimed shit magnet, finding himself investigating only the most perverse elements of underground America. Soon after waking and stumbling around his dirty and trashed office he's visited by the President's Chief of Staff, who is a smart-talking asshole who shoots heroin. (I think you can guess from just that how insane this book will be.) He gives Mike half a million dollars to track down a book, a book that contains a second constitution, "it details the real intent of their design of American society, and twenty-three invisible amendments to be read and adhered to only by the presidents, vice-presidents and Chiefs of Staff." Bound in the skin of an extra-terrestrial that hounded Ben Franklin, the book vibrates lightly at the same frequency as the human eye thereby forcing you to read it. It was lost when Nixon gave it to a woman living on a houseboat and the trail has been cold for many years. It's Mike's job to rekindle the trail and find the book for the president.

You find all that out within the first five pages, the next 300 follows Mike's descent into the seediest and most bizarre and disgusting of America's underbelly, as he hops across the country looking for the book. His first search point is a cinema for macroherpetophiles, people who get off watching videos of Godzilla spliced with porn scenes of people in Godzilla masks. That sets the tone for the rest of the hunt, some are a little more harmless, homosexual bodybuilders who inject their scrotums with saline and oil tycoons who hoover up cocaine with an altered diving tank and mask, while others are downright disturbing and vomit-inducing. (I'll save you from a description, you can discover for yourself when you read the book.)

During the lizard lovers movie night Mike meets Trix, a heavily-tattooed Polyamorist (read: bit of a slut) writing her thesis on the "extremes of self-inflicted human experience." Five drinks later she's signed up to come along, and the sex-starved Mike (his last girlfriend left him for a transgender with a hair transplant on her nipples) has to work hard to stop staring at her like a perverted freak. Rather obviously they have sex eventually but their relationship is complicated by the fact that Trix has sex with every and anyone and is all for bestiality (as long as it's an appropriate and loving relationship) while Mike apparently is a prude who should have been alive 50 years ago.

This book is completely insane and all kinds of crazy, but as Ellis himself states, he began it as revenge to get his literary agent off his back. As crude and as obscene as it is, underneath the wild and crazy bukkake, prostitution and sex-addicts is a rather simple message. Life on the fringe isn't on the fringe anymore and hasn't been since the invention of the internet. The fringe went mainstream. There are actually about three rather annoyingly overt monologues by 'fringe/seedy characters' (one's a serial killer) about how all the 'sickening' depths that Mike thinks he's plunged into aren't depths at all since they can be readily found within a 2 minute google search. America (and I imagine much of the Western world) is driven and governed by sex, and the question that seems to come up again and again, is that if it isn't hurting anyone and they're doing it away from general society, who's it hurting?

This prevalence of sex is combined with an abundance of violence, Mike elbows a small child in the face so Trix can get the window seat on a plane and when the mother makes a scene Mike tells the air-hostess she was speaking Iraqi and the mother and child are escorted off the plane. On another flight Mike meets another P.I who he knocks unconscious after the man went on and on and convinces the air-hostess he was trying to light something (read: a bomb) in his shoe, and by the end of the flight the all the crew and passengers have had a turn hitting him and his face looks like steak. The violence is far less prominent than the sex and it sneaks up on you and is mentioned in such an off-hand way that it strikes you even harder.  I'd like to say events like those would never happen but I watch the news, only a few years ago we (Australia) locked up a middle-eastern doctor for months accused of terrorism purely based on a bit of paranoia and rage and only last week Vancouver was over-run by hooligans after their team lost a hockey game. It may be exaggerated, but the events of this novel are frighteningly real all the same.

Ellis obviously thinks the world has gone a wee bit mad, especially when you consider that much of the content of the book (other than the compelling second constitution) is a barely exaggerated version of what really is readily available on the internet and on the fringes of society. Whether you believe it's as important, prominent or as likely to go mainstream as Ellis shows it in this book is up for debate, but the book reminds us of the dark and disturbing possibilities that linger in our future.

The message of the book does pack quite a wallop by the end of the book but it isn't as dark and as preachy as I maybe have made it sound. It's a hard-boiled detective story for the F'd up 21st century and it is equal parts brilliant, hilarious, and (humorously) disgusting. My only criticism lies with Trix. She's mainly there as a foil to Mike's conservativeness and as a weird and sick tour guide through the depths of America's scum, and I wish she'd have just disappeared instead of sparking the romantic subplot that she does. It actually reminded me alot of Harry and Ginny's relationship in Harry Potter. It had a use-by date and it never truly meshed so it should never last. Plus her brash, modern 'I'll sleep with whoever don't call me a slut' brand of feminism was a little boring (and ridiculous) to me, she was the only predictable part of the novel. That said she serves an important purpose, so in the end I can live with her over-the-top, in-your-face stupidity.

This book isn't for the faint hearted. I've tried to lay some of the more gory/disgusting details right out on the table for you so you have an idea what you're getting yourself into, but I still think this could be a novel enjoyed by most people. (perhaps not my grandparents!) Yes it's outrageous, and full of drugs, sex, violence and swear-words but so are your average action novels. At least this book has out of this world writing and handles the messy topics with a bit of fun and a wickedly dark sense of humour while still knocking your breath out with the message. Plus if you read this you can cross Godzilla Bukkake off your bucket list, don't lie now, I know it's there!

My rating: 4.5/5