It's
funny: ofttimes writers can work so prolifically and so well in a
particular genre it can be disquieting, even outright bizarre, when
one suddenly takes a soft left into a narrative that rings familiar
but proves a different beast altogether. We get used to seeing
certain names indelibly affixed to certain brands and lazily assume
those names will continue to serve from the same tap every time.
It's a foolish assumption of course, and thank God for that, for what
sort of a world would it be if our bards didn't force us to do the
occasional double-take?
In
the case of Gun Machine, it
was I who was lazy, or at the very least a wee presumptuous, taking
it as a given that Warren Ellis would cast his readers off into
another theater of the demented and the baffling, which has been the mad
Scotsman's de rigueur for
quite some time now. What I got instead was a damned entertaining
mystery that resembled some of the more popular police procedurals of
today. Think the gravitas of a Law and Order blended
full tilt with some of the post-Saw,
creep-tastic MOs of Criminal Minds and
some playful Castle-esque
banter tossed in for fun. It isn't Ellis exactly as we'd expect, and
that's the lion's share of the fun of this book.
Those
who've heard of Ellis probably know he writes comics. Fans of Ellis
know those comics usually involve a cutting, warts-and-all look at
subjects traditionally coated in candy and laminate, sanitized for
mass-production; subjects he is more than happy to gut-punch and
drown in irony and blood until the veneer sloughs off, exposing the
awful truths hiding beneath. With The Authority he
gave us a positively seditious take on the Justice League and other
such 'super teams'; with Transmetropolitan he
foretold a future where politicians lie for money and the most
popular junk food was caribou eyes, and introduced us to Spider
Jerusalem, the last honest investigative reporter who also happened
to be the most hateful human being in the universe. Then Mr. Ellis
tried his hand at crime fiction with 2002's Crooked Little
Vein, a hilarious knock on the
old private-eye-with-a-problem trope. Ellis's trademark is his sick sense of humor and pervasive nihilism, an
ever-present “we're all screwed” attitude that gives his fiction
a wicked free-spiritedness.
So
it would only be natural to figure Gun Machine to
be another entry in his journal of the darkling absurd. But instead we meet
John Tallow, a surprisingly ordinary NYC detective with that (sadly)
very ordinary affliction of being burned out, ground down, and
thoroughly bored with the daily slog of policing the greatest city in
the world. He's an introvert who loves music and has a fondness for
history that he hasn't the time or the energy at the end of the day
to really pursue. Everything changes in a flash when his partner is
gunned down during a routine domestic disturbance and he uncovers an
enormous cache of guns laid out like museum pieces in an otherwise
innocuous apartment. Saddled with the hopeless investigation, Tallow
delves into the puzzle of how the strange arsenal came to be there
and why the vast assortment of weapons appears to have been laid out in
a pre-ordained, ritualistic pattern. Shellshocked and treated like
damaged goods by his unbelieving superiors, John uncovers a web of
lies stretching back to the dawn of America when Manhattan was holy
ground, and becomes the target of a mysterious killer who seems to
walk through past and present like a deranged spirit.
This
is a more mature and better-written story than Crooked
Little Vein, though Ellis
traditionalists might balk at the absence of loonier elements. I
know I did at first, until I realized I was truly engaged in the
mystery; after thirty pages I found I wasn't really 'missing'
anything, though I was keen enough to notice when some vintage Ellis
crept in, as it occasionally does. Eschewing the wonky, Gun
Machine follows Tallow's
investigation along a logical path and presents ample twists without
delving into great complexity or world-building minutiae.
Character
is key. Tallow is a sympathetic hero and a believable protagonist
with just enough in the way of quirks to make him interesting; a guy
you can root for whom you'd never find in central casting. Even
before the tragedy that claims his partner, John is a quiet guy who
is painfully aware of his lack of social skills and who has taken the
appropriate steps to accommodate that, never marrying, drinking
alone, keeping to himself. The pleasure is in seeing his character
galvanized out of inertia, goaded into never phoning it in again, and
putting his nose back on the grindstone to solve a case that everyone
but he knows is destined for failure. In so doing he reveals his
hermitic (and impressive) detective skills and a cunning survival
instinct that baffles his detractors and surprises those who are set
against him.
Ellis
seeds the novel with a terrific supporting cast, namely the two CSU
cave-dwellers Scarly and Bat, a lesbian hardass and
passive-aggressive uber-nerd respectively, and the strange figure
known only as 'The Hunter' who may or may not be supernatural in
origin. The author has a remarkable sense of propriety when it comes
to dolling out the endearing and the weird, never going over the top
but at no point leaving us too comfortable with the players, just as
the players never seem completely comfortable with Tallow and his
head-first immersion in the investigation. They, as we, are left
wondering if our hero isn't becoming unhinged, or if he wasn't
already before the story began.
Ellis
writes excellent prose: literate and fun, to-the-point and very sly;
the perfect style for a cop drama that reads like spiked punch and
elicits a laugh at all the right moments. It's a quick read and thus
a little light on the details; indeed, one almost wonders if there
isn't a little too much
restraint in the research department, but Ellis makes up for it with
a handful of scenes that are so patient and meticulously paced they
seem ready-made for the screen (which is not a coincidence, as Gun
Machine has been optioned for
film). Ultimately the greatest complaint is that the ride is over
too fast and we're left with only a brief glimpse into the lives of
some good folks we wish we could get to know better. Maybe Ellis
will oblige us with a sequel in the future, but for now he seems to
be enjoying that enviable niche where he can write a standalone novel
that tells the tale and not get shoehorned into a six-book engagement.
At
this point, I think he's earned it.
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