Gun Machine - Hardcover

Ellis, Warren

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316187402 ISBN 13: 9780316187404

Publisher: Mulholland Books, 2013

Synopsis

Warren Ellis reimagines New York City as a puzzle with the most dangerous pieces of all: GUNS.

After a shootout claims the life of his partner in a condemned tenement building on Pearl Street, Detective John Tallow unwittingly stumbles across an apartment stacked high with guns. When examined, each weapon leads to a different, previously unsolved murder. Someone has been killing people for twenty years or more and storing the weapons together for some inexplicable purpose.

Confronted with the sudden emergence of hundreds of unsolved homicides, Tallow soon discovers that he's walked into a veritable deal with the devil. An unholy bargain that has made possible the rise of some of Manhattan's most prominent captains of industry. A hunter who performs his deadly acts as a sacrifice to the old gods of Manhattan, who may, quite simply, be the most prolific murderer in New York City's history.

Warren Ellis's body of work has been championed by Wired for its "merciless action" and "incorruptible bravery," and steadily amassed legions of diehard fans. His newest novel builds on his accomplishments like never before, announcing Ellis as one of today's most daring thriller writers. This is twenty-first century suspense writ large. This is GUN MACHINE.

About this title

About the Author:

Warren Ellis is the award-winning creator of graphic novels such as Fell, Ministry of Space, Planetary, and Transmetropolitan and the author of the novel Crooked Little Vein. His graphic novel RED was adapted into the #1 hit film of the same name starring Bruce Willis and Helen Mirren. He lives in London.

Review:

"Wonderful...a blast...barbs that should have the scriptwriters for Bones scribbling on napkins. More fun than I've had out of a crime novel in a long time."―Michael Robbins, Chicago Tribune

"Ellis tackles the police procedural, although it's bloodier and more intriguing than any episode of Law & Order or CSI, and arms it with gallows humor, high-tension action scenes and an unlikely hero."―Brian Truitt, USA Today

"A pleasingly quirky crime thriller...Tallow is oddly endearing, so single-minded you can't help rooting for him...There is nothing comic-bookish about [Ellis's] writing, which races along in crisp hard-boiled fashion."―Charles McGrath, New York Times

"GUN MACHINE has a bunch of Ellis' signature gestures: characters with resonant names or no names at all, nightmarish near-future (and recent-past) gizmos, constant and gleeful vulgarity...The brutal cat-and-mouse game between Tallow and the killer suggests that the chaos of human malice can gum up even law enforcement's most elegant systems. More deeply, though, GUN MACHINE is about the ways the grimmer parts of America's history can ooze into the present day, and in particular about the country's deep, horrible connection to firearms."―Douglas Wolk, Los Angeles Times

"GUN MACHINE gives the fast paced, visceral detective story a sublime new treatment. Here is a book anyone interested in the Big Apple should read--it is not only a hunt for an unforgettable killer, but a quest to exhume the many New Yorks that have evaded our eye."―Darren Richard Carlaw, New York Journal of Books

"A mad police procedural just north of the border of dark fantasy. Delightful."―William Gibson, author of Neuromancer, Pattern Recognition and Spook Country

"The dialogue is rapid and witty, the action moves along, the city and its inhabitants are wonderfully violent, and the cat-and-mouse plot is satisfyingly solid...Ellis, an Englishman, completely nails New York and New Yorkers."―C.A. Bridges, Daytona Beach News-Journal

"Riveting. Inspired. Ellis does a fine job of adding a highly unusual spin on the genre. Ellis, a U.K. native, writes about New York and New Yorkers with no missteps, and while his vision of the city is that of an ultra-violent hellhole where vicious murders are commonplace, he peppers the narrative with humor and vivid descriptions of violence that are simultaneously beautiful and terrifying. Gun Machine propels the multitalented Ellis, already a household name in the world of comics, into the ranks of the best crime writers in the business."―Jason Starr, Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Warren Ellis has a terrific way with words...vivid [with] fully fleshed characters...a seriously good writer with a seriously wicked imagination."―Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

"From the wrenching violence of its first pages to its bone-jarring conclusion, Gun Machine never lets go of the reader and never flags in its relentless pace. In the course of 300 tightly wound pages, Ellis unloads a full clip of ideas, black humor, character, and copper-sheathed action scenes. Every sentence is a bullseye."―Joe Hill, New York Times bestselling author of A Heart-Shaped Box and Horns

About this edition

• Publisher: Mulholland Books
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0316187402
• ISBN 13: 9780316187404
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320