Crooked Little Vein - Warren Ellis

So, as a bookseller, there are some perks. The best, of course, is seeing cool books long before they are released. But, with great power yadda yadda yadda. That in mind, it's expected that if I see something good, I let people know. Here you go...

If Chuck Palahniuk was kidnapped, Raymond Chandler was resurrected, their DNA was spliced together, and the mad scientists responsible for those events wanted something to read on lonely nights in the lab, Crooked Little Vein would be the result.

Fans of Warren Ellis's comic book work know that he deconstructs genres as a function of breathing, and now he's brought his particular insanity to the literary establishment. This book flouts conventions long held sacred in noir stories. There is no square-jawed stoic gumshoe. Our hero is a dead-end detective whose defining feature is his impossibly bad luck. Corruption is not so much railed against as resigned to. To say Ellis forgoes understatement would be an understatement. It's all there in front of you, pulsing with strangeness and testing your stomach's resolve. Crooked Little Vein is vintage Warren Ellis, and it's time more people know just what that means.