Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Crooked Little Vein: A Novel
    Crooked Little Vein: A Novel
    Crooked Little Vein: A Novel
    Audiobook5 hours

    Crooked Little Vein: A Novel

    Written by Warren Ellis

    Narrated by Todd McLaren

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    Michael McGill is a burned-out private detective who suddenly becomes enlisted by an army of presidential goons to retrieve the Constitution of the United States, but not the one we all know about. This would be the real Constitution (the one with invisible amendments) created by some of the Founding Fathers as a fallback for their great experiment. Along the way, McGill gains a polyamorous sidekick named Trix, gets scared to death by what men do with warm salty water, and descends into a world where crime, sex, and madness all seem to be the same thing.

    Full of mind-bending style and packed with a wild cast of characters, Crooked Little Vein infuses Robert B. Parker with Kurt Vonnegut and the madness of the graphic novel world. A surprisingly surreal treat, it will appeal to hardcore comic fans, mystery aficionados, and anybody looking for a riotous adventure.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateNov 15, 2007
    ISBN9781400175611
    Author

    Warren Ellis

    Warren Ellis is a graphic novelist, writer, public speaker and author of the bestselling novel Gun Machine (Mulholland, 2014). He contributed the foreword to Penny Red (Pluto, 2011).

    More audiobooks from Warren Ellis

    Related to Crooked Little Vein

    Related audiobooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Complaints Department

      May 23, 2020

      Complaints Department
      4 min read

    • Article

      Come with Me

      Dec 1, 2022

      Come with Me
      12 min read

    • Article

      Robert C. Koehler: Reclaiming A Lost Sense Of Community

      Nov 25, 2021

      The first time it happened was bad enough. “It” amounted to this: It was Wednesday afternoon, I had finished my column early and walked out to my car, parked in the alley behind my house. I was on my way to an art show — very excited. I got in the ca

      3 min read

    • Article

      Desk Flowers

      May 6, 2021

      Desk Flowers
      11 min read

    • Article

      When Life Bites

      Sep 14, 2020

      When Life Bites
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Turn

      Aug 14, 2019

      HERE’S a story. In college I entered the spring semester of my freshman year on academic probation. There wasn’t one reason this happened. There were many. I had signed up for a computer science class called Digital Security with no programming knowl

      5 min read

    • Article

      Breaking Good

      Aug 19, 2020

      Breaking Good
      12 min read

    • Article

      Breaking Good

      Aug 19, 2020

      Breaking Good
      12 min read

    • Article

      Identity Crisis

      Feb 2, 2019

      Identity Crisis
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Leather Coat

      Apr 4, 2024

      The Leather Coat
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Silhouette Artist

      Jul 25, 2019

      The Silhouette Artist
      6 min read

    • Article

      Prohibition

      Sep 10, 2021

      It had been ten days since my last fix. I knew what I was going to do was wrong, but unless you knew the yearning that your body exerts, the internal pull which strangles your very soul into submission, then you cannot judge me. Yes, it was wrong. Ye

      15 min read

    • Article

      The First Day: One man’s walk to his own cremation.

      Aug 7, 2014

      The fog was thick when I left my bedsit and ventured out alone into the barren and murky city. I was heading for what used to be called a crematorium and these days is known as a funeral parlor. I had received a notice instructing me to arrive by 9 a

      15 min read

    • Article

      Performance

      Nov 10, 2022

      “Wait here,” the guard said as he shut the door behind him, leaving me by myself. The floor inside the lab was polished, and the air smelled of disinfectant, and yet the room felt unclean. Leaves shook on a tree outside the window, making shadows on

      18 min read

    • Article

      Dancing

      Sep 1, 2022

      Dancing
      14 min read

    • Article

      Righteous

      Jan 22, 2019

      Righteous
      8 min read

    • Article

      Good Bones

      Mar 19, 2020

      Good Bones
      18 min read

    • Article

      Shame Is Ever-Present When You’re Sitting in a Cell

      Oct 23, 2020

      Between a strained relationship with my family and the death of a good friend, I’ve struggled to feel like I’m worth something.

      5 min read

    • Article

      A Week In Bedlam

      Dec 9, 2019

      A Week In Bedlam
      13 min read

    • Article

      The Bullet in My Arm

      Sep 6, 2018

      The Bullet in My Arm
      13 min read

    • Article

      Speedboat

      Mar 24, 2022

      Nobody died that year. Nobody prospered. There were no births or marriages. Seventeen reverent satires were written – disrupting a cliché and, presumably, creating a genre. That was a dream, of course, but many of the most important things, I fi nd,

      14 min read

    • Article

      KILL A STRANGER Chapter 2

      Dec 31, 2020

      If you’ve never been in a situation like this before, you just can’t understand it. I’ll be blunt. It was absolutely terrifying. The nightmare started just like that. Bang. I literally woke with a start, and realised that I was being flung around in

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Crooked Little Vein

    4/5

    537 ratings38 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Crooked Little Vein – Warren Ellis, “awesome” in a box… ready to be mixed, baked, and eaten while youa re stoned and listening your records.

      Now, do not confuse your Warren Ellises here. The Ellis who wrote this book is not the phenomenal composer who works with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Grinderman (with nick cave and a bunch of the seeds), and Dirty Three.

      No, this Ellis is of comic series Transmetropolitan, among other comics, books, tv shows, etc.. He puts forward one hell of a book here.

      hm.. i dont know where to start here. I guess with a quick thank you.. THANK YOU JARET AND JENN. i rean through this book in a few hours time while i was riding the max train to work and back.

      No spoiler here, the description given here will happen in the first five-10 pages.

      Apparently, back in the day, founding father Benjamin Franklin wrote a book when he was in france for a few days. The book was written when his nights sleep was interrupted 6 nights in a row by an alien being. On the seventh night, he punchs the alien in the face and kills it instantly. Ben Franklin then takes the aliens skin and binds his book.

      What exactly is this book? It is an alternate and secondary constitution to the united staed. it is the fix for everything bad that every happened to our country and our people… only problem is that Nixon gave the book away back in the ’50s and no one knows where it is.

      again, this is in the first few pages. the main character, Mike McGill, wakes up to find a giant rat taking a piss into his coffee cup and then appears to be laughing at him. before he can adjust to the zoological ramifications of a rat taking pleasure in his pain, he is approached by a high power politician. The politician would like to pay him $500,000 to find the book and return it. its not that he is the best detective in America, they want him because he is a “shit magnet” and as such, the book will likely just come to him directly.

      Not sold on Crooked Little Vein yet? Two words:

      Godzilla Bukkake… (if you do not know what bukkake is, look it up first. it will help you determine if this book is a good match for you)

      Buy this book. borrow it. steal it (then give it back with foot notes)…

      One last thing, Listening to Grinderman while reading this book is fantastic.. so you could actually ahve both Warren Eliis parts at once.. i wold highly suggest it actually. Grinderman is a nice cooperative sound to the hilarious and surprise of the books scenes…

      oh yeah.. i wanna holler out to spider jerusalem. props. love you man,… even if you are fiction.
    • 3/5
      I had no prior notion who Warren Ellis is, but many a froth-mouthed fanboy was praising him and his apparently extensive oeuvre of comic books, mostly, but also, among other things, this literary novel, Crooked Little Vein. Therefore I didn't have any preconceptions about what to expect and so by golly was I in for a big surprise! I never could have believed it would be such a snoozefest! Ellis wastes way too much time and effort trying to gross out the reader with irrelevant little sexual vignettes, neglecting plot and characters completely. We get the usual cyberpunkish dark sassy smartass girlfriend-sidekick, combination of the bad girl you jerked off to in high school (and still do; admit it) and your sarcastic best friend. The male hero is your usual thirtyish everyman with an unlucky streak and no discernible qualities. Furthermore, even an outrageously over-the-top story is allowed to make some sense; I would have liked a bit more plot in my holes. Eww, gross.It was a really fast read, on account of it being very short and with a badly rushed ending. I'm sure a less jaded person would have vomited a little in their own mouth, but unfortunately I barely lifted an eyebrow at the Godzilla bukkake and it was all downhill from there. Being a pacifist and all, I still wanted to pound the "witty" narrator's face in many times. Truth be told, I did also let go a guffaw a couple of times. Moderately entertaining, but I couldn't be anything but blasé about it. Weird internet porn and criticism of the Bush regime; yawn, that's so 2007.
    • 5/5
      "I looked back to see a team of cops lay into her with batons. “I’m white, you bastards!” she yelled, until one of them shot her with a Taser."

      Warren Ellis make you squirm and laugh at the same time with prose as delightful as his work in comics.
    • 4/5
      Gritty and dark, but also amusing and fun. I'm still on the fence about whether I like Ellis, I don't think I love his style, but I enjoy his stories.
    • 3/5
      I love Warren Ellis’s style of characters and storytelling. I absolutely fell in love with Spider Jerusalem in Transmetropolitan and the unreliable narrator from Supergods. He carries over the style to Crooked Little Vein, the first novel I've read from him, and it was a rather interesting experience. Unlike his graphic novels, I must say the book was an ultimately insubstantial but fun ride as a Pervert’s Guide to America.

      It’s Ellis being himself - brash, loud, and horny. The language is the first thing that pops up from the pages. Imagine having a dirty conversation with your best friend. That’s what it’s like. The fun part of reading it was the absolutely zany situations and just how ‘normally’ it’s presented. Our narrator, the straight arrow he is, goes from one insane sexual situation to another. It starts off with a Godzilla bukkake show (yes, you read that right) to orgies where participants must spread HIV to teenagers (not really far fetched to be honest).

      The farce doesn’t stop there either. Our protagonists jump from one bizarre situation to another, offering up Ellis trademarks along the way. The casual conversation with the serial killer on the flight was amazing; the insane political family also comes to mind; the saline-pumping gay group is another. He mixes politics, power, and sex into drawing an intensely insane picture of America that’s both bizarre and somehow normal at the same time.

      All this is done through the narrator who offers up a picture of a regular Joe who’s been through a lot. He’s shocked by all the bizarre situations he’s thrown into, reflecting our own views on the matter. He’s us in a way, and it’s great how Ellis uses him to ground an otherwise insane story. He’s used to highlight America’s “moral decay,” but by the end he’s numbed, and so are we.

      That brings up America as a character. Ellis, a British author, offers an interesting look into the “heart” of America. Its big roads, lack of pedestrians, guns, casual outlook towards sex and its weaponization and commercialization in the upper echelons of power and society are all well-represented. Media and control over it is also another theme, though it plays a more secondary role here. While it may seem controversial and negative at first, there’s a sense of unbridled optimism and faith in the media and the legal system. America, despite its “faults” (so to speak), is made up of its people, no matter how fucked up they may be. They’re good people, and the story reflects that opinion quite strongly.

      As I wrote earlier, the story may feel light and ultimately insubstantial, I feel it works well as a strange pervert’s guide to America, showcasing both its highs and lows. The ending may feel rushed, but it also felt like a strong commentary on the Internet and its usage, showing how going viral can strip something of its virility.

      Overall, highly recommended read if you’re looking for light reading and maybe some interesting insight into America’s sexual commodification.
    • 4/5
      I hope Ellis didn't do any personal research for some of the incidents in this wild book. A down-on-his-luck Private Investigator is hired by the President's bizarre Chief of Staff to find the alternate version of the Constitution--the one with the invisible amendments. He teams up with a woman researching her thesis, and off they go to meet up with some of the most messed up, peculiar people you'll ever encounter. The plot here isn't really what counts--although Ellis wraps it up pretty neatly if you're willing to just go with it--it is the journey that counts, to Columbus, Ohio; San Antonio; Las Vegas; and LA. If you're easily disgusted, you won't make it halfway through. So dare yourself to read it.The audiobook is very well read by Todd McLaren.
    • 3/5
      dark and stormy... a tad disturbing, but in a good way
    • 4/5
      One of the funniest (and foulest) books that I've ever read, & holds up well on re-reading. Mike is a down-on-his-luck detective who attracts bizarre clients and even more bizarre cases. He's approached by a powerful politician and asked to track down a missing book: an alternate US Constitution. Things quickly go awry in the most horrifying and hilarious way possible.
    • 5/5
      This is an excellent novel. It pulled me in from the very beginning and kept me entertained the whole time. Every thing about it was done very well. Solid characters that you can picture. Interesting events to keep the story rolling. A conclusion that made sense. And it kept an off-beat sense of humor going through the entire book.Michael McGill is a private detective. But not just a normal private detective. He is a shit magnet. He has one weird thing after another happen to him. This can be seen within the first five pages where he wakes up naked in his office after spending the night there and has moments to get dressed before being hired by the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States. And things get stranger and stranger from that point on. Things like ostrich love orgies and salt water injections and other borderline gross things.I found the book pure fun to read and very much enjoyed it. About the only thing I would hold against it was that some of the middle went from one location with weird events to another location with weird events to another. Kind of like in a chase movie where the person keeps going from one point to another to flesh out the movie. This almost seemed like the case in CROOKED LITTLE VEIN. I didn't notice it though until afterwards so I guess it almost doesn't count. I already collect several of Ellis' comics. I now look forward to more of his books.
    • 4/5
      Rating: 3.5* of fiveThe Book Report: How bad can a day get? Mike McGill can tell you, and he'd be right. But he doesn't know *exactly* how bad a day can be until the White House Chief of Staff (bear in mind the book came out in 2007, adjust your mental compass, and go from there) walks into his office with a deal he can't refuse.Hey, after waking up naked in your office chair with a rat pissing in your coffee mug, why would anyone refuse any deal?So Mike gets a half million dollars in expense money, a "handheld computer" that hinges open (nothing ages worse than hi-tech), a phone number to call in case of emergency (555-555-5555, "we invented that, son, and gave it to Hollywood, but it really works for *us*"), and some new clothes, and starts following cold leads into seamy, icky, disgusting corners of the world that I choose to believe the sickfuckopath (© 2011 Stephen Sullivan, used by permission) who dreamt up this horrifying little odyssey invented whole and entire, in search of a magical copy of the United States Constitution that Ben Franklin had bound in the hide of an alien he killed during his embassy to Paris. A copy of the Constitution that Nixon, during his Vice Presidential stint, traded to a Chinese spy for sex.It goes without saying that clearly we're not in 1+1=2 reality any more, and all expectations needs must be recalibrated accordingly.I can't and won't reproduce the course of the hero through the obstacles and labors set in his path, the trickster god making paths smooth and then throwing turmoil into his journey, the monsters and the temptations and the Bright Shining Goal suddenly losing its luster...this is the Hero's Journey. Google it if need be. It's well done, and it's laugh-out-loud funny for 2/3 of its length and it's got the currently fashionable pseudolibertarian underpinnings that have such wide appeal.But Crooked Little Vein winds its way through a very, very old forest on a well-watered course.My Review: Wherein the ding in my rating from 4.5, to 4, to an ending of 3.5 stars of five. It's a lot of fun, and the narrator of this edition (it's not next to me and I'm too damn lazy to get up and see what his name is) does a really really good job with it. But I stopped laughing after the Baby Jesus Butt Plug incident came damn close to getting me hospitalized from lack of oxygen.A Quest has a material purpose, where the Hero's Journey does not. When the Hero goes on a Journey, he's looking for wisdom, he's undergoing a rite of passage, he's serving a cause; and when he's on a Quest, he's looking for an object. Mike does both. That's sloppy storytelling. Yes, of course it's true that all Quests return wisdom as one of their take-aways, but the material object of the Quest remains valuable in and of itself. This book sets up a Quest. It delivers the Hero's Journey.And it's a little too in love with its edgy, wacked-out sensibility. One character Mike meets on a flight from Las Vegas to LA is so extremely over-the-toply A Mouthpiece For A Message that I almost gave up and returned the CDs to the library. He gave away the most gratuitous seeming twist in the ending that I didn't like on aesthetic, moral, or practical grounds, buried in a mound of trash talk that I just didn't like at all because, well, damn.Should I recommend a book I'm so conflicted about? Well...Mike's journey comes to an end with, amazingly, his bank account full, his heart open, and his ya-ya in use for the foreseeable future. Find me a man who doesn't like that ending.
    • 5/5
      Book Review - Crooked Little Vein by Warren EllisCrooked Little VeinWarren ElliseBook Version300 pages (portrait view)Publisher: William Morrow Publication Date: July 24, 2007Language: English ISBN-13: 978-0060723934If you’re easily offended by rude or ribald language, unconventional sexual fetishes, or buckets of blood* you may want to steer clear of both Crooked Little Vein and this review. Just sayin’… fair warnin’.Like a violent criminal with a reputation to uphold Crooked Little Vein forced me into a secluded, dark alley and proceeded to cave my head in with the claw end of a one-pound hammer (and silly me enjoyed every second of it.) There is nothing soft or fuzzy about this debut novel from comic book writer Warren Ellis. On the contrary, it is a blunt force instrument waiting for an audience to beat. And, thankfully, it found me. Now, you should know that while prepping for this review (using Google and other implements of mass time annihilation) I conducted a bit of research regarding this novel. It appears that there are only two opinions pertaining to Crooked Little Vein on the Internet. Either the reviewer thoroughly hated it or totally enjoyed it. Now, on a certain level (you know the one – where your parents taught you to be polite and “If you can’t say something nice….”) I can see why some may have disliked it. To paraphrase - Those are not the reviews you’re looking for. There’s a lot of rough, rude, randy, and rash language in Crooked Little Vein, and fetishes that reside a million miles south of main-stream wife-swapping suburbia. In addition, the central character and his beautiful side-kick experience some terribly far-fetched adventures on their way to retrieve a powerful lost book which contains a secret version of the United States Constitution. The tome is sought after by the White House Chief of Staff who just happens to be a functioning heroin addict with a bottomless checkbook. And he’s willing to pay big money to get the book back. Along the way, the protagonist, down-and-out P.I. Mike McGill, gets into some of the funniest, raciest, counter-cultured situations ever encountered in fiction. In my own twisted assessment all the odd circumstances, bizarre characters, and unusual events are so outlandishly creative that they make this particular work of fiction one of the most remarkable and interesting stories I’ve read in a very long time. Some might call Crooked Little Vein irreverent. Others vulgar. But there’s always room for a story that provides something innovative and curious. And boy, does this deliver. Here’s the strange thing – the principle idea – the detective or P.I. story – is a very old one yet Ellis’ concoction of urban fantasy, unrefined emotion, offensive language, bizarre situations, and out-right crappy luck suffered by the main character and his assistant is enough for me to call this one brilliant piece of neo-noir fiction. Ellis has a solid grasp of what’s interesting, and cringe-worthy, about the steamy under-belly of America and his sharp, machine-gun style of writing fits this story perfectly. His prose is brutal, honest, tight, and lacks useless frill and decoration. A feat every author should strive to achieve. And although his characters are thrust into some of the strangest situations in modern fiction they are, by far, some of the most emotionally real characters I’ve ever encountered. Their feelings are never hidden, always worn on the sleeve, and they’re by no means afraid to say what they’re thinking or feeling. Surprisingly, beneath the surface of this extraordinary story lies a tender, albeit unorthodox, love story. Perhaps that’s what I found most interesting about the book. It has all the elements of a murder mystery quest, it forces you to realize that there is more to America than baseball, hot dogs and apple pie, and the characters are brutally honest and unexpectedly real. I thoroughly enjoyed this story and if you are one of those readers not easily offended by crude language and bizarre circumstances, or like the works of Richard Kadrey, Carlton Mellick III, or Chuck Palahniuk or agree with the majority of my book-review ratings you’ll probably take pleasure in it, as well.4 ½ stars out of 5The AlternativeSoutheast Wisconsin* Okay, I know, my review has nothing in the way of ribald language, controversial sexual fetishes, or blood and gore and I apologize for that but I’m willing to bet my opening statement got you to read this far… and for those of you that did, here’s the payoff.Q. Lewd language, fetish, and bloodshed?A. Fertilizer, cuttlefish, bazooka.I’ll let you determine which is which…
    • 2/5
      This is a wonderful example of an author adding profanity and sexual fetishes in an attempt to add interest and edge. Elements of the story and the characters seem to not have been fully developed. It seems as if the author was making an attempt to portray a political/social satire, but not achieved. These stereotypical characters make the book tedious. There is some humor in the book that almost makes it bearable.
    • 2/5
      At it's core, Crooked Little Vein could have been a decent pulpy detective novel: the Founding Fathers wrote a secret book, the true Constitution that can control the people of the US. Its loss in the '50s is being blamed as the cause of the changes in society since then, and high-ranking government members (think the old man from Desolation Jones, if you want a mental image) want it back.Ignoring the massive logistical/plot holes in that that even a few seconds of pondering will bring to the fore, it still has potential as a throw-away thriller. But the book itself never develops on that potential. Instead what we get is: protagonist finds out who had the book; goes to visit them and encounters some sexual fetish that the former owner has; learns who they gave it to; loop and repeat. It results in very disconnected series of scenes, where one group of chapters doesn't really seem to have that much — or even any — connection to the next.Add to it that other people's fetishes are at best somewhat funny, more commonly just boring, and the loving descriptions of them just get kind of tedious. (I get the impression Ellis may have been attempting to shock. The problem is that, to anyone who follows him even in the slightest, this is all probably old hat.)Towards the end of the book, one of the other issues present in Ellis's other writing crops up as well: the "I've just heard of this theory/technology/historical fact that I find interesting. One of the characters is now going to stop all plot advancement in order to expound on it at length" problem that, for example, plagued the final issue of Planetary.Overall? It's not a stinker, but it is ultimately dull and not really worth the time I spent reading it.
    • 3/5
      Another person's review, plus the title, plus the first line in the book gave me great hopes for it.Unfortunately, it is too much like Palahniuk's work (i.e. Lullaby or Haunted) but not *quite* as squeamishly gory. Mostly it is similar in that the author goes 'over-the-top' in order to make his point (which is sort of political in nature). And because I don't like politics in my readings, and don't really care about and/or agree with the author's 'politics', I didn't enjoy this book very much. Though it does have some catchy one-liners in it.
    • 5/5
      Warren Ellis at his very best. I read this book in an afternoon. Afterward, I needed to take a scalding hot shower and scrub myself with steel wool to get the filth off, then I wanted to read it again. Cannot recommend it highly enough.
    • 4/5
      A fun, quick read. Like a noir/fetish-porn/snarky-Michael-Moore-documentary triple feature where the projector is very confused about which reel goes next. Ellis hates the American Underground only slightly less than he hates the American Mainstream. I understand how he feels.
    • 2/5
      Wow, was this book disappointing. What should have been Ellis's introduction to the print world became a collection of hey-guys-look-at-this-crazy-shit-I-found-on-the-internet-and-posted-on-my-blog-already, strung together by the thinnest of narratives. There are occasional sentences that smack of the author's way with words, but it's hardly worth the trudge through the rest of the book.
    • 4/5
      Entertaining, comic and vilely disgusting in varying measures - Having read the authors comments I was vaguely apalled that some of the most off colour excesses were reality based rather than fiction and I find myself asking - "Do they really provide Jesus shaped butt plugs in Las Vegas?" - In fact to be frank, prior to reading this I had no idea such a thing as a butt plug even existed....but then I guess you live and learn.
    • 4/5
      This one was suggested to me by a friend and when I read the description, I was like, no. Too edgy for me-of-the-weak-stomach. And there were definitely parts that were difficult to stomach! The comedy leans strongly toward the black and sick, but the novel reminds me of Carl Hiaasen - but like more messed up. The humor was similar - if darker - but, in the end, cosmic justice is meted out. The ending is surprising, and not just for its (relative) happiness. I liked it a lot, and I have suggested it to a few others. I will definitely try some of Ellis's graphic novels - probably.
    • 2/5
      There's a million reviews out there for this and so I'll make this one short: I've never seen perversion so gleeful.There are a couple of patches where it doesn't work, but overall, Ellis knows how to use his ability to write fantastically tight and sharp short pieces to make an entire novel. It's vignette-y, but it ties together. It's a quick read because it pulls you in and chokes you lovingly until it's done.
    • 3/5
      I loved this book! It is bizarre, fascinating, and hilarious!
      This author typically writes comic books, but has now moved on to novels. Which I am grateful for because this book was crazy and fun!

      Any book that starts with a rat pissing in the main characters coffee has got to be strange, but this comes up with some funny crazy shit!

      You have to read it.
      It's amazing.

    • 5/5
      Warren Ellis proudly dangles his genius in our faces again with this one. If you're from the internet, like me, nothing in this book will be particularly shocking. The imagery is wonderful and you'll be chuckling knowingly as you read his prose.If you aren't from the internet, however, you should probably either avoid this book completely or read alone with the curtains drawn. Not that it's overtly sexual, but you're not going to want the guy next to you on the bus reading over your shoulder.Not recommended for children, children at heart, the childish, or the crotchety.
    • 4/5
      Crooked Little Vein – Warren Ellis, “awesome” in a box… ready to be mixed, baked, and eaten while youa re stoned and listening your records.

      Now, do not confuse your Warren Ellises here. The Ellis who wrote this book is not the phenomenal composer who works with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Grinderman (with nick cave and a bunch of the seeds), and Dirty Three.

      No, this Ellis is of comic series Transmetropolitan, among other comics, books, tv shows, etc.. He puts forward one hell of a book here.

      hm.. i dont know where to start here. I guess with a quick thank you.. THANK YOU JARET AND JENN. i rean through this book in a few hours time while i was riding the max train to work and back.

      No spoiler here, the description given here will happen in the first five-10 pages.

      Apparently, back in the day, founding father Benjamin Franklin wrote a book when he was in france for a few days. The book was written when his nights sleep was interrupted 6 nights in a row by an alien being. On the seventh night, he punchs the alien in the face and kills it instantly. Ben Franklin then takes the aliens skin and binds his book.

      What exactly is this book? It is an alternate and secondary constitution to the united staed. it is the fix for everything bad that every happened to our country and our people… only problem is that Nixon gave the book away back in the ’50s and no one knows where it is.

      again, this is in the first few pages. the main character, Mike McGill, wakes up to find a giant rat taking a piss into his coffee cup and then appears to be laughing at him. before he can adjust to the zoological ramifications of a rat taking pleasure in his pain, he is approached by a high power politician. The politician would like to pay him $500,000 to find the book and return it. its not that he is the best detective in America, they want him because he is a “shit magnet” and as such, the book will likely just come to him directly.

      Not sold on Crooked Little Vein yet? Two words:

      Godzilla Bukkake… (if you do not know what bukkake is, look it up first. it will help you determine if this book is a good match for you)

      Buy this book. borrow it. steal it (then give it back with foot notes)…

      One last thing, Listening to Grinderman while reading this book is fantastic.. so you could actually ahve both Warren Eliis parts at once.. i wold highly suggest it actually. Grinderman is a nice cooperative sound to the hilarious and surprise of the books scenes…

      oh yeah.. i wanna holler out to spider jerusalem. props. love you man,… even if you are fiction.
    • 5/5
      I wasn’t familiar with any of Warren Ellis’ previous work before reading “Crooked Little Vein”. Over the years, Ellis has cut a large figure in the field of comics, establishing himself as a preeminent writer. He also has a reputation for being outrageous and for seeing how far he can push the envelope of bad taste.Well, “Crooked Little Vein” doesn’t disappoint, nor contradict this reputation in the least; if anything, it furthers it. The book is stunningly outrageous, incredibly filthy and vile, and wickedly over the top. This humorous descent into the depravity of the American underbelly feels like frolicking in a gutter and splashing oneself with filth. And I loved every minute of it.Mike McGill is a private dectective who tends to be a magnet for some bizzare situations, and that is putting it nicely. He is hired by a government official to find the real Constitution of the United States. This leads Mike to a disturbing journey across America, where he experiences all types of depravity like fans who enjoy Godzilla movies a little too much sexually and individuals who inject their nether regions with saline. Unfortunately, this is about as far as I can go into the story without you having to wash your eyes out afterwards. Oh yes, it is disturbed and profane.“Crooked Little Vein” is essentially a montage of disturbing set pieces held together by McGill’s overall search for the Constitution. Ellis has an amazing gift to write scenes that would surely make you queasy if you weren’t laughing so hard. So it goes without saying, if you are faint of heart about the use of profanity, scatological and perverted sexual references and other general foulness, you’ll really want to avoid this novel. However, if you want to read something incredibly disturbing and not run-of-the-mill, this is must read material.The book is brief and can be read in a few hours, so it mostly maintains its shock value, but the outrageousness of it does start to wear thin by the end. Ellis’ writing style is simple and straightforward. His descriptions are stark, which makes the foulness that Mike uncovers even more horrifying. This is a new genre Ellis is plumbing here: perverted noir. And it is the level of depravity that Ellis is able to pull off that makes this novel incredibly entertaining.Last Word:“Crooked Little Vein” is a fast, fun read that revels in its perversion and outrageousness, and full of shocking scences that are unforgettable. Warren Ellis has crafted a tiny little treat that will bring a smile to those who want to see how far bad taste can be pushed. Because in the hands of Ellis, bad taste can be pushed amazingly far.
    • 5/5
      This was REALLY fun. The second I got done I wanted to start over and write down some of the clever lines (and there are many). There are definitely hints of Neal Stephenson here and if you're an Ellis fan I don't have to warn you that this is over the top vulgar. In this case the vulgarity is all sexually oriented, which is exactly what I'm into. Most of the fetish stuff he mentions I've never heard of so either I'm not as well versed in the politics of perversion as I thought I was, or he's making it up.My only complaints are that EVERY character in the story is a complete wacko and it was too short. I hope to see more of this same character later, he was fun. And the narrator was a perfect choice (the same guy that does all the Takeshi Kovacs novels).
    • 2/5
      Let me start out by saying that I loved Transmet, and that I read Warren Ellis' blog almost as often as I read BoingBoing.That said, this novel is good for one thing-- a mindless read-through. As alt-pop trash, the novel sings. Ellis is quite good at the dirty detective novel narration. In this respect the novel reminds me a bit of Penn Jillette's novel Sock.Unfortunately, Crooked Little Vein doesn't tread any confusing or dangerous ground. It may serve some people as an introduction to alternative sex- and body-play, but a curious person with an internet connection will have already heard and seen this all. Especially if they read Warren's blog.The relationship between the narrator and the object of his desire is stagnant and boring. He starts out having a problem with her sexual acts, and ends tolerating, rather than respecting, them. I didn't want him to jump in and start living that life with her-- that would have been unrealistic. But the fact that the narrator simply gives in bothered me. Combined with the side-line nature of the relationship, the whole thing proved insubstantial.I did very much like the idea about the book that resonated with people. It is the only thought-provoking aspect of the book. One often wonders if a book has to actually be read to affect people (look at any banned book or, more recently, The DaVinci Code controversy). Ellis acknowledges that this is not a new phenomenon, but, just as with every other issue in the book, he doesn't take it anywhere. He doesn't push the issue or ask any questions.Again, a good mindless escape, with no lasting effects. Boring characters. Solid structure and story, though.
    • 4/5
      Wow. Okay. So, Warren Ellis is perhaps most well known for his comic series Transmetropolitan although he is the brilliant author of many other series and graphic novels besides. Having read a few Transmetropolitan collections, I can understand why he is so well loved and perhaps, in some circles, even considered a genius of the art-form. Crooked Little Vein is his debut "traditional" novel.Michael McGill is a down-on-his luck private investigator. His luck, or lack there of, is exactly why he is being offered his most lucrative case ever: in exchange for finding a missing book, half a million dollars have been transferred to his bank account by a rather corrupt government official. It's not just any book however, it's the other constitution of the United States, complete with invisible amendments. A secret document written by the founding fathers to control the masses, it was "lost" by Richard Nixon in exchange for some, ahem, favors.Apparently, the book has a history of being traded for what most would consider deviant sexual behaviors. And Mike's in luck (or not), he has plenty of leads as to the book's current location. In order to find it, he will have to wind his way across the states, visiting the sexual under-belly of the nation. Fortunately, early on in his search he meets Trix, a young bisexual woman who is investigating various forms of sexual deviance for her thesis. She keeps him more or less sane for most of the trip, despite their many differences (Mike is a bit squeamish when it comes to weird sex, for one).Humorous, over-the-top and at times disturbing, Crooked Little Vein was an extraordinarily fast read, which considering its length probably isn't that surprising. I'm fairly certain I enjoyed it. I think. Well, at least the beginning. By the end, I didn't really care much anymore. The story started out strong but kinda fizzled out by the end. Although, I will say, I'm absolutely in love with Trix.Experiments in Reading
    • 3/5
      Crooked Little Vein was disappointing. It's understandable, but disappointing - it's the book you'd write if you wanted to take what makes Ellis Ellis in the comics world, and present it to people who've never come across it before. I'd be interested to see what people who've never read any Ellis before thought of it, but I was glad to be done with it. More than anything else it reads like a fictionalised version of his blogs, with a loose narrative linking together a succession of 'Freaks and Geeks Wot I Did Find on the Internet'. It's remarkably generic and derivative of his own work, which leaves the whole thing feeling stale and unpleasant. He's capable of so much more. The main thing in its favour is that it's so short, light and frothy that it could be read and disposed of in no time at all. Eminently forgettable.There's an entirely unfunny scene with testicles being injected with saline.
    • 4/5
      Warren Ellis takes a seed from traditional hardboiled detective stock and germinates it in soil composted from some of the strangest niches of the Internet. The tale reads like Hunter S. Thompson after twenty years on the Fortean Times beat.The McGuffin in the story is a secret, backup Constitution to the United States that was lost decades ago under salacious circumstances, and our hero, Michael McGill, is hired to get it back because he's a natural magnet for bizarre circumstances. The trail leads him through some of the most unusual fleshpots of urban America, and anyone who has followed Ellis' weblog will know that he isn't even making up half of it.I laughed my way through the book because I've exposed my brain to so many disturbing things that this read was just an entertaining way to see them put together. If you aren't already acquainted with some of the more peculiar extremes of human behavior, however, this book may be more than a little unsettling. (I already told my wife she doesn't want to read it, and only had to read a single choice sentence to convince her.)
    • 4/5
      This quick read was pretty demented and a fun story. It explores the question of "what if" someone in the government had the possible ability to restore the "old fashioned" morality that the right wing republicans drool over. My husband is reading this now, and I wonder if he will also enjoy it!!