In order to overcome the difference between McCarthy-era-L.A. and contemporary New York, where Crooked Little Vein is set, Ellis describes a city full of degenerates with truly astounding sexual proclivities — another hallmark of urban decay. Those hallmarks feature more prominently in the short work than perhaps they ought: instead of undergirding a detective story with sexual preoccupations, Ellis makes contemporary American sexual deviance the central driving force. The square-jawed private dick (hardboiled? check) is conscripted by forces beyond his understanding (led by a man who may or may not be John Ashcroft with a heroin addiction — still hardboiled? check) to recover a mysterious McGuffin document bartered for sexual favours by President Nixon (hardb — what?).
Here the book departs the realm of the hardboiled and becomes something like a Dan Brown book with naughty bits: the missing document is an alternate Constitution which, when read aloud, would cleanse the country of sexual deviance and restore it to its Puritan beginnings. The author has a great time peopling his underworld with villains both in favour of and opposed to such a cleanse and is relatively successful at obfuscating his anti-hero’s stance on the subject until the end. The detective can either rail against the putrification of America or he can throw in with its corruptors. You can guess the outcome by the fact that America is still, happily, awash in filth and depravity. The fact that it’s not the 50s anymore and the degenerates have won, is both the problem with contemporary pulp fiction and its solution.
