''Crooked Little Vein'' is the

first novel A debut novel is the first novel a novelist publishes. Debut novels are often the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to p ...

comic book writer A script is a document describing the narrative and dialogue of a comic book in detail. It is the comic book equivalent of a television program teleplay or a film screenplay. In comics, a script may be preceded by a plot outline, and is almost al ...

Warren Ellis Warren Girard Ellis (born 16 February 1968) is an English comic book writer, novelist, and screenwriter. He is best known as the co-creator of several original comics series, including ''Transmetropolitan'' (1997–2002), ''Global Frequency'' ...

, published by William Morrow on July 24, 2007. The novel is written in the first-person, similar to much of the

hardboiled Hardboiled (or hard-boiled) fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction (especially detective fiction and noir fiction). The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence o ...

detective genre. The book was based on research material posted on Ellis' websites, mostly odd news items and disturbing pictures from the web that the author had found or had been sent. The novel has been translated into Spanish, German, French, Czech, and Italian.

Plot summary

Michael McGill, a burned-out

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is hired by a corrupt, heroin-addicted

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to find a second "secret"

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, which had been lost in a whorehouse by

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 until Resignation of Richard Nixon, his resignation in 1974. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican ...

. What follows is a scavenger hunt across America, exposing its seedier side along the way. McGill is joined by a college student, Trix, who is writing a thesis on sexual fetishes. McGill has to deal with strange events sometimes unrelated to his adventures – he describes himself as a "shit-magnet", with weird phenomena following him wherever he goes.

Critical reception

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'' reviewer Jonathan Lasser called Crooked Little Vein "an ace put-up job" and wrote that it was "evidence that freedom is more valuable than repression". Whitney Pastorek, reviewing for ''

Entertainment Weekly ''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American online magazine, digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, ...

'', noted that the work "is not for the faint of heart" and that Ellis has "got a bright future outside of the picture books".

References

External links

Interview with Warren Ellis at Newsarama

{{Warren Ellis Novels by Warren Ellis American thriller novels William Morrow and Company books 2007 debut novels