Gun Machine Paperback – January 14, 2014

Gun Machine starts of violently and never gives the reader a chance to catch their breath. In a Manhattan apartment building, Detective John Tallow witness the murder of his partner by a broken naked man with a shotgun, and he responds in kind. In the early stages of his and and before the police arrived, the man had blown a hole into another apartment. After entering the apartment to look for any injured witnesses, Tallow finds himself surrounded by gun. Guns cover the walls, floor to ceiling. Each gun is connected to an unsolved NYC murder. There are no other signs of life.When you boil it down, Gun Machine is a story about stories. There are the stories behind each individual gun found in the Manhattan apartment. There is a story behind every victim of the serial killer known only as "The Hunter" and then there is the story that they all tell when organized into the intricate patterns found on the walls of Apartment 3A. New York City itself can be considered a machine full of smaller automatons that constantly grind out story after story.Ellis does a phenomenal job at telling these stories. He presents the reader with a deep, complex character in Tallow and develops him mainly through his dialog and actions. Instead of boring the reader with page after page of exposition, he lets each character grow naturally. Despite learning a almost nothing about Tallow or The Hunter's past, by the end of the story you feel like you've known them your entire life.Gun Machine is a much more mainstream work than Ellis' previous novel, Crooked Little Vein, or his comic book work. That doesn't mean, though, that it is without his trademark wit or love of the obscure weirdness inherent in the human race. There are no movie theaters with Godzilla hands for sale or saline junkies to be found in these pages. Instead of hitting you directly over the head with the dark acts people do when alone, Ellis uses the police band radio to tell these stories. As off the wall as some of city's music may be, knowing Ellis there is truth to be found in every one of them.Gun Machine is not perfect, but even my biggest complaint is fairly minor. The reader is presented with the grand mystery/conspiracy, but there is actually very little police work done. Tallow recognizes right away what he needs to do... work each case individually until you find what's missing - the killer. Do this for enough cases and eventually the shape of that missing piece will start to become clear. Unfortunately, the investigative plot seems to be driven forward more by wild leaps of faith and unexplained insights than by actual discovery. Tallow always seems to be a step ahead of where he should be, but not so far ahead that the threads of the book come unraveled. Additionally, I felt that The Hunter's chapters came a little bit to early and gave away too much too soon. I would have liked to have been in the dark just a while longer.Overall, Gun Machine is another winner by Ellis and Mulholland Press. Fans of both Ellis and Crime fiction should find it to be a fairly quick but deep and entertaining read.

Gun Machine is a story working on two layers. The first layer is a well written thriller where a policeman and a serial killer stalk each other across Manhattan. The second layer is more interesting to me- the ghost maps of modern life. "Ghost Maps" is a term Ellis introduces midway through the book, describing things like the old paths of rivers running across the island, the geographical distribution of surveillance cameras, police precinct boundaries, informational lag time in information networks as a measure of distance versus geographical distance and many more ideas of a similar nature. It is the informational overlay we place over our environment, and how that environment is shaped by forces invisible to us, that forms the intellectual backbone of Ghost Machine. It is a highly sophisticated view of cities and very thought provoking. It is a particularly unusual way to frame a murder mystery.And more than brainy- Gun Machine is funny. Bleakly, blackly, horribly funny. Warren Ellis established his gift for a searing turn of phrase back in his graphic novel days and it's put to good use here! His description of Sumo should see the sport spike in popularity in bars across America. I won't spoil the jokes, but oh god are they funny. Ellis is clearly a firm believer in the theory that tragedy and comedy are best deployed proportionately and in conjunction.The characters are well rounded and interesting. They live in a plausible world, and they behave with a pleasing degree of rationality. This may be an overreaction on my part, but I seem to have read a great number of books recently where many plot defining challenges would have been overcome by a reasonably emotionally stable seventh grader. The obvious exception to this is the psychopathic serial killer, but the point of that character is that he functionally lives in another world. Our hero, Detective Tallow, is a deeply flawed and lonely character, so lonely that he does not even realize that he is lonely and unloved. His CSU sidekicks are weird as hell, but weird in a very human way. Big city weird that argues with a spouse over the cost of steak sandwiches and leaving coats on the back of the couch. For all that they make what I will bowdlerize as a coitus-bot and other offences to the gods of HR.It's a good book. The plotting is tight, the pacing is swift but pleasantly varied, and the dialog is sharp and real. Gun Machine is packed with ideas and trivia. It makes you think. And when you learn what the Gun Machine actually is, how it works and the why of it... well. It's worth reading the book to find out. I read it in a day, staying up much too late to finish it. I recommend this book unreservedly.

On the second page of this book Ellis describes his main character as having a “face like a bulldog chewing a wasp.” Oh dear, I thought, but the Independent on Sunday said he offers “vivid descriptions” rather than unfortunate cliches. So I read on.“Best of all,” says The IoS, “he never underestimates the reader’s intelligence.” The reviewer must’ve been the editor’s remedial godson on work experience, because Ellis explains that mother-of-Pearl is found in oyster shells, and what a doppelgänger is, to name two examples of crass underestimation.His characters, says the IoS, “behave like real people rather than cardboard soap stars.” They are among the most ill-conceived, one-dimensional characters I have ever read.The nadir of this book are Pages 80/81, which had me laughing that this crap could be published, and angry that this crap could be published. I’m going to quote some of the worst drivel to hopefully save some of you some money:1. “He reaches into the alluvial deposits in the back of his car and pulled up a tablet device, an e-reader, and a compact wi-if router.” This is the 21st century you know.2. “Local legend had it, that in wilder times, ...” Jesus wept.3. “Tallow went to the bar and did what he always did. Looked at all the taps and then ordered a pint of cream ale.” This is someone acting like a real person according to the IoS. Someone who goes to the same bar three times a week, who doesn’t have the basic self-awareness to know his usual drink, and looks at all the taps before ordering... every time. F*** me.4. “There ain’t enough happens in soccer. It’s like watching twenty-two hair models kick a ball around for what seems like six months and then one of them falls over and the ball goes in the goal.” Ignoring the threadbare American cliche of the bartender’s complaint, I struggle to see who the one who falls over is, unless he means the guy in the different-coloured jersey diving to try to stop the ball.5. “They look like two linebackers been locked in Burger King for five years, they run at each other like two eighteen-wheelers in loincloths...” First simile is the only decent bit of writing in this barrel of offal, but do “real” bartenders talk like this? With two different similes following each other to describe one thing? Isn’t that how bad authors write?6. “Tallow went through the bar and out into the smoking area, shaking his head.” What, the whole time? That’s a lot of head shaking. Not sure real people would do that. Maybe “Tallow shook his head, then went through the bar to the smoking area” would ring truer. Or even “Tallow went through the bar and shook his head as he entered the smoking area.”7. “He didn’t intend to stay out here all night, but a smoke before and after some food sounded good. It sounded better, in fact, than eating but he knew from experience that if he didn’t force something in there now, he’d wake up feeling sick and empty.” Wow! So this adult male, thanks to his experience, knows that not eating gives you that empty, sickish feeling most humans recognise as hunger.And at this point I chucked the book.Crap prose.Over-explanation.Flimsy characters.

I really, really wanted to love this book. I could damn it with faint praise and say it is a better book than Warren Ellis' first novel, but it's just too anaemic.The story is slight and largely predictable and relies on an implausible coincidence or two. There is a climatic scene that you can see coming as the elements were introduced and as cheesy as anything on a bad tv cop show. It's a shame, because so many of the details are strong. Ellis excels at characterisation and details, but his overreaching story needs some work.

I'd been half-expecting another 'Crooked Little Vein' when I bought this, so I was surprised to find myself reading a more or less conventional (although solidly crafted and well-executed) crime thriller. I'm not usually a fan of the genre, but Ellis's style and storytelling skills won me over, and - although I didn't devour this novel as voraciously as I did 'CLV' - I was still very glad I read it. While it lacks the shocking and absurdist elements that flavoured a lot of Ellis' other writing, there's no arguing that it nonetheless tells a compelling story with aplomb and originality.

but runs out of steam towards the end. I`d still read more of this guys writings as I like the ideas he comes up with.

If you know the name Warren Ellis you're probably a comics fan, and you know he is one of the handful of greatest writers in that genre. Good writing is good writing, adaptable to many formats. He can really produce the goods here, and you are very likely to think "yes, that was pretty damn good, I'll read this guy again".