WHO KILLED ONE THE GUN?

The teasing title of Little’s first novel only hints at the layers of playful self-referentiality bubbling beneath its hardboiled surface.

An insurance company has hired “third-rate gumshoe” One the Gun to investigate the death of Five the No Longer Alive, who in life was Five the Dive, a man who’d wrestled the struggling seafood restaurant once owned by Eight the First Mate into profitability by redubbing it the Dive Inn, emphasizing drinks over food, and hiring hulking Four the Door as doorman. One the Gun’s had some modest success in divorces and embezzlements, but he’s never solved a murder before. And he’s laboring under an unusual handicap this time: He’s just been shot to death himself, and his afterlife has sent him spinning back over the same last day over and over again. His faithful assistant, Two the True Blue, informs him that Five died after a fatal dose of rat poison. But it’s unclear whether that dose was administered by Eight, who’s now working as a bartender for a man he deeply resents; by Six the Kicks, Five’s flirtatious widow; by Seven the Heaven, a Catholic priest whose congregants at Our Lady of Immaculate Numbers are mostly ignorant of his gambling addiction; or by any number of other suspects. Spouting a steady stream of Chandleresque similes (“that dish is as stunning as a billy club to the back of the head”), One the Gun battles to make each reiteration of the day different enough to get him closer to the truth. Readers should be warned that the denouement will make them realize that even the few verities they thought they could trust here are anything but reliable.

A highly original metafictional pastiche.