June 4, 2007
At the start of this dark, demented fiction debut from Ellis, the creator of DC Comics' Transmetropolitan
and The Authority
, the U.S. president's heroin-addicted chief of staff hires 25-year-old Lower East Side PI Mike McGill to find the “other” Constitution. This is “a secret document privately authored by several of the Founders” detailing “the real intent of their design for American society,” which a debauched vice-president Nixon “lost” in the '50s. With “half a mill” in black ops money, Mike hires cute tattooed Trix Holmes to be his guide to America's deviant underworld, whence the 50-year-old cold trail begins. In their search for the missing document, “reputedly bound in the skin of the extraterrestrial entity that plagued Benjamin Franklin's ass over six nights in Paris,” the pair make some wild pit stops in Columbus, Ohio; San Antonio, Tex.; Vegas; and, finally, L.A. The home of the free and the land of the brave has rarely looked so creepy in this snappily paced homage to William Burroughs's Naked Lunch
.
Starred review from December 24, 2007
Skillful investigator Mike McGill has just been hired by the heroin-injecting chief of staffto reclaim a secret constitution, and his adventures lead him into a level of hell even Dante couldn't imagine. Eloquent and charming serial killers, genital-modifying policemen and reptilian porn fans challenge McGill's sanity as he seeks to retrieve the precious document. Ellis both mocks and pays tribute to the detective genre with this deliciously perverse tale of American fetishism. McLaren embodies McGill with all the investigator'swit and cynicism. His reading makes McGill's resigned disposition toward these events even more prescient through timing, tone and emphasis. Listeners can hear in McLaren's voice resistance clash against acquiescence as McGill contends with the more surreal aspects of life. Even the more exotic characters of the novel aren't turned into vocal caricatures but provided a quality and realistic voice that adds a deeper level of insanity to the individuals and the novel. Simultaneous release with the Morrow hardcover (Reviews, June 4).