Gun Machine (edition 2013)

Tallow is having a bad day. There are bits of his partner’s brain on his jacket and in his hair and three of his bullets now reside in the bastard who pulled the trigger and gave the Pearl Street walk-up a new coat of paint. That is just the beginning. Before the end of the day, Tallow will have stumbled into a clusterfuck of unprecedented proportions that seems destined to drag him down and write him off.

Anyone familiar with Warren Ellis will recognize Gun Machine as having clawed its way up from the abyssal depths of the author’s brain. Reading the novel, there is a sense that you have tread this path before. Bits and pieces of concepts stick out and prick at the back of your mind, trying to dig through the fog of recollection to pull memory. It is hopeless though because there is too much information to go through, too much broadcast from Ellis over the months and years to pull something concrete out of the aether. The sensation that this tenuous familiarity with the author has somehow tainted your mind with amazing and disturbing shit starts to creep in until you are left wondering if a) this is going to having lasting repercussions and b) just what this book would be like if you didn’t read through it in a haze of half-recognition.

Crooked Little Vein, Ellis’ first novel, was a crazy journey across the US that stopped every once in a while to explore whichever new fetish it happened across. The book was dominated by eccentric personalities and weird shit and it became one of my favorite novels because of it. I recommend it to everyone. They rarely thank me. Ellis has toned things down a bit for Gun Machine. The characters are better realized; odd, but no longer defined solely by the oddities that make them stand out. There is still weird stuff to be found, but much of it has been subsumed by the grisly horror of Tallow’s police scanner, giving us a good glimpse of all the terrible things that no one seems to have witnessed in the city.

The characters may be better realized in Gun Machine, but that does not prevent them from being the weakest part of the novel. Much of Tallow seems to have been cut from the same cloth as Warren Ellis. They share the same habits–the energy drinks, cigarettes, and alcohol–and lifestyle–information overload, tech of all sorts, and interest in music. The only thing that prevents this from being full on author insertion is that Tallow develops outward from those. He has his own personality and quirks and there’s even some personal growth before the end. Scarly and Bat, his Crime Scene Unit sidekicks, are the secondary characters of note here. They begin like many of Ellis’ secondary characters; little balls of quirk that prove that the murderers of the city aren’t the only crazy people out there. But, of course, they expand out from that and eventually become something close to full-fledged characters that you can care for.

The Hunter is our antagonist and second point of view character, the man responsible for the room of guns and the deaths that they delivered. His chapters bring an intriguing SFnal slant to the table, but neither the character or his seeming existence straddling modern Manhattan and the Mannahatta of old managed to instill an interest in his story. It wasn’t until later in the novel that I stopped hoping the chapters would wrap up quick so I could get back to Tallow and the crew. It would stand to reason that the most interesting and original character of the lot would be the one I had little patience for.

The story unfolds at a brisk pace with the twists and turns that even I, a novice reader of the genre, have come to recognize. These guns and the guy pulling the trigger have created a bad case that no one wants to deal with, that the police can’t afford to deal with, so it gets hung around the neck of a man who just saw his partner killed and killed the man who pulled the trigger. It is only a matter of time before the case is shutdown and there’s a foreboding sense that it will be taking Tallow with it when it goes. Cue the puzzle pieces all falling together, the fingers pointed, and all that jazz. It is not the most complex of mysteries and the information is not hidden from the reader. We figure things out alongside Tallow and cheer him along when he delivers his Monologues of Doom to the unsuspecting assholes responsible for brutal shit that’s gone down over the past twenty years. Frankly, that’s a nice change of pace from the usual methods of trying to pull off a twist that you see coming from miles away.

While I would hesitate to describe Gun Machine as an improvement over Crooked Little Vein, it is a solid novel that delivers on all of the weird, crazy-ass shit I have come to expect from Ellis. It is a good read, not great and not as good as his first effort, but definitely worth your time. Read it, and don’t forget about Crooked Little Vein while you’re at it.

http://epbth.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/gun-machine-warren-ellis/ ( )

Warren Ellis reimagines New York City as a puzzle with the most dangerous pieces of all: GUNS.

After a shooting on Pearl Street claims the life of Detective John Tallow’s partner, he unwittingly stumbles into an apartment stacked high with guns. When examined, it is found that each gun is connected to a previously unsolved murder. Someone has been killing people for twenty years and keeping each gun as a trophy. Tallow has been put on the case and with the help of two CSU employees they are soon on the hunt for what could be the most prolific mass murderer in New York History.

I recently read Warren Ellis’ Crooked Little Vein and while I enjoyed the book I felt it was missing something. Gun Machine has that missing element; blending Ellis’ humour this book offers the violence with that dark cynicism that his other book was missing. Gun Machine starts out with the loss of Detective Tallow’s partner and while he should be mourning this tragedy he has been forced into what could be the biggest case of his career. Pairing with a couple of gothic CSU agents to help with forensics, Tallow begins to uncover a huge New York conspiracy.

Tallow is the perfect lead for this type of story, stuck between hating his job and the sudden loss of his only friend and partner; he is thrown into the deep end with no help at all. He struggles to make sense of this room full of guns and with the help of his two misfit sidekicks they begin to form an unlikely team.

While Ellis does favour the hard-boiled genre a little, this is more of a crime thriller than anything else. The blend of humour and his cynical outlook are what make this book worth reading. Crooked Little Vein tried to blend the two together but ended up focusing too heavily on the humour and the weird fetishes to really work too well. Gun Machine seems to get that balance right, turning this into a purely entertaining escapist novel.

Gun Machine really works at what it sets out to do, not too heavy on the humour, violence or dark aspects. It’s been creating a buzz about it and it is well deserved, I loved reading this book and didn’t want it to end. Sure it’s not without its flaws but for the escapist element, this book really is worth reading.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2013/03/25/book-review-gun-machine/ ( )

Somehow, I got an entirely wrong impression of this book from the blurb. I was thinking it would be some kind of thriller with elements of the supernatural. Perhaps not quite Butcher's Harry Dresden but definitely in the vein of Wilson's Repairman Jack. Instead it's just a plain ol' suspense thriller.

That's okay...I like those, too.

Basically, we have a fairly gritty police procedural, full of the dark moods and cynical outlooks common to noir. I think that Ellis' background as a comic book writer gave him that little extra punch when it came to writing the short, vivid scene. The characters are well-realized and colorful, if not incredibly deep in this first volume (it's easy to see this as the start of a series). The plot moves along nicely and, while you can figure out some of the stuff in advance, there's no sense that the author has given away everything at the start. The scenery is quite evocative of Manhattan, both old and new.

Fate assists the protagonist detective a bit too much via luck and coincidence, so the reader needs to turn off the 'Oh, come on!' response a tiny bit. I didn't think the ending had quite the impact that the rest of the book had but it was certainly adequate (and I'm not trying to damn with faint praise).

This has that feeling of something that might pick up a bit of a cult following. That wouldn't be bad...it was fun. ( )

This has been getting a lot of buzz, and while I admire its verve, I can’t say as I’m as blown away as some. I’m a huge fan of Ellis’ first novel Crooked Little Vein, a nasty little satire that hit all the right spots. Gun Machine, a crime thriller about possible the greatest serial killer in history, is more concerned with quirk than crime, and while I’m a great fan of quirk, it never falls completely together for me. It’s a good ride, don’t get me wrong, and worth reading, but I wanted something just a bit meatier. ( )

A fine combination of noire, police procedural, and "what sick bastard would think of doing that?" is here combined by the excellent writing of Warren Ellis. A stronger, more connected narrative line than his first novel — Crooked Little Vein — this tale is rooted in Manhattan and combines local history and a security company-based conspiracy to form an excellent, and tightly woven tale of intrigue. Characters (both normal and colourful) are fully formed, and the settings are expertly detailed to bring things to life in your head without heading into Proust-like territory. Fabulous, and highly recommended for anyone, with little restriction for age, gender, or tastes: something for everyone here. ( )