I was recommended this by a bookselling colleague in New Zealand. We have similar taste in crime, especially crime on the dark side which this certainly is. He simply told me to read it which was all I needed to know.
I haven’t read any Warren Ellis before. He has written another crime novel, Crooked Little Vein, which I now want to check out. He has also written a number of graphic novels including Transmetropolitan and Red as well as a series of Marvel Comics including The Avengers, Iron Man and X-Men. He also writes a great blog which I’m now also following.
Gun Machine is darkly cynical, blackly funny and brutally violent. My three favourite things in a crime novel. The book opens with two cops being called to an apartment building in New York where a naked man with shotgun has seemingly lost it over an eviction notice. In the aftermath Detective John Tallow discovers an apartment filled with guns. Each gun is tied to an unsolved murder which means Tallow has just reopened 200 cold cases. This wins him absolutely no friends in the police department and he needs as many as possible as all 200 cases are dumped on him. As he tries to piece together what is going on he unearths a killer that is seemingly unstoppable and untraceable. A killer whose meticulous work Tallow has interrupted and disrupted. And that doesn’t please this killer one little bit.
This is a great mind-bending, escapist thriller which will have you laughing, cringing and glued to the page all at the same time. I literally had no idea how this was going to end even with 10 pages to go. A truly terrific ride with the perfect amount of crazy thrown in.
ISBN: 9781444730647
Format: Paperback
Price: $29.99
Imprint: Mulholland Books
Price: $ 16.99
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
ISBN: 9781444730654
Pages: 320
Format: EPUB
Filed under: Book Reviews
