So yeah Warren Ellis has written a metric ton of comics, but only two prose novels: Crooked Little Vein and Gun Machine.  Crooked Little Vein was a blast of weirdness, weird subcultures and hypnotic conspiracy building that if you had the stomach for was your favorite book that year.  Gun Machine, relatively,  feels far more straightforward.  It’s still strapped to a framework of something deep and deeply weird, messing with history and detective stories in interesting ways.