Crooked Little Vein
Ellis, Warren
Hardcover
List Price:                 $21.95
booksXYZ price: $14.27

Possibly one of my favorite "entertainment" novels (as verses serious hard-core literature), Crooked Little Vein, is not a novel your grandmother would read.  It also is not at all suitable for most young adults.  it's a hardboiled detective genre - which is defined by wikipedia as "a literary style distinguished by an unsentimental portrayal of crime, violence, and sex." Ellis is very matter-of-fact, yet delightfully witty, in his portrayal of all the world has to offer in terms of the bizarre and occasionally explicit (yet not pornographic) material.  At it's crux, it's an old fashioned dective novel about a struggling, extremely unlucky private detective (in fact the opening line describes a rat urinating into his coffee mug) and the absurd case handed over to him by some governmental man-in-black.  It's the type of material dreamt about by conspiracy theorists (if only they had as good of an imagination).  I can't say much more without giving too much away, and this is a novel you don't want to have spoiled.  Almost every other turn of the page brought me to tears with laughter, absurdity, and irreverence.  It has everything a burgeoning cult fiction novel needs, and more. 

Ellis never actually intended on writing a novel - as a graphic novel writer I don't think he ever really considered it.  However, according to interviews in Publishers Weekly and Newsarama he managed inherit a literary agent who requested a novel.  He sent her what he describes as "clearly, blatantly unpublishable" figuring that would be the end of it.  In a few weeks she returns to him saying she sold the novel to HarperCollins.  And that is how Crooked Little Vein was born.  [check out the links for the rest of the interviews].  There is supposed to be another novel by Ellis, Listener, due out in Feb. of 2011, but no talk of a third novel as of yet.  Check out the books profile page for the synopsis and to buy!  If you're interested in a review check out Entertainment Weekly's review by Whitney Pastorek.