Gigi Little, author of Who Killed One the Gun? Photo: Stephen O’Donnell
Portland writer Gigi Little is pulling something of a numbers racket in her new novel Who Killed One the Gun? — which, no matter how nefarious those suspicious numbers might sound, isn’t a bad thing at all.
To quote Herman’s Hermits’ 1965 pop hit I’m Henry the Eighth, I Am (another numerically insistent work), One the Gun includes nary a Willy or a Sam: Almost all of the book’s characters carry numbers in their names, beginning with One the Gun himself, a run-of-the-mill private eye who’s something of a cross between a would-be Sam Spade and one of Albert Einstein’s loops in time.
Over the novel’s 288 pages Gun runs into the likes of Zero the Hero, Two the True Blue, Four the Door, Five the No Longer Alive, Six the Kicks, Seven Heaven, Eight the First Mate, and Ten the When. Oh: and, the surprising Waitress with the Doe Eyes, who has dreams of becoming a lawyer.
Why a lawyer? Because there are cases that need to be solved and taken to trial. And One the Gun, as it turns out, is dead, at least in some version of reality that seems on hold because of the time warp: shot to death late in the never-ending day by some unknown person whose identity the dead/not dead Gun is determined to discover, even as he pursues the identity of whoever killed Five the No Longer Alive.
And exactly how, if he’s dead, is he going to do that? Well, it’s about that loop in time. Every night, Gun’s adventures end. And every morning he wakes up to the same day he’d just finished — except that he (and one other person, as it turns out) realizes the same old day has started yet again. While everyone else is entering the new day as something fresh, Gun knows that time is on repeat, and he can remember everything that happened in the today that was yesterday, and for today-yesterdays stretching out before that. The question is: Can he alter his own actions so that he can change the past, and therefore also alter the future?
As confusing as this may sound, in the actual reading of the book it’s not. Little, who is also staff cover designer for Portland’s Forest Avenue Press (which is the publisher of Who Killed One the Gun?), editor of the fiction anthology City of Weird: 30 Otherworldly Portland Tales, and marketing coordinator for Powell’s Books, keeps the story moving briskly forward — quite a feat considering that in the novel time itself keeps lurching back and forth, unpinned from forward motion. She tells her tale in a happily tongue-in-cheek manner, having sly fun with the conventions of the traditional detective novel and giving it an arm twist or three. Little was also a circus clown for 15 years, and a welcome dollop of that slightly absurdist take on everyday reality suffuses the novel.
A lot of the action takes place in a dive bar with a backroom gambling den habituated by, among others, the local preacher, who may not be quite as heavenly as he puts on. Little tosses in a dash of longed-for romance, too: Gun pines for his loyal assistant, Two the True Blue, who unfortunately for Gun is keeping company with the slightly truculent Three the Goatee.
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In a brief passage representative of the novel’s sly and sprightly tone, Little describes True Blue, breathlessly and a little comically, through Gun’s besotted eyes:
“She shifts and crosses her legs under her pale peach cotton skirt. Two the True Blue has a heart-shaped face and the kind of beautiful innocence that would make any altar boy give up his ticket to heaven just to steal her lollipop. It’s not just her innocence that’s beautiful either. She’s all over beautiful. Just look at her there, smiling that smile that melts you like honey on a hot biscuit.”
Goodness: How’s a dead/not dead gumshoe supposed to handle an unrequited desire like that? And how’s he supposed to solve a pair of murders, including his own, when time itself keeps slapping him back and forth?
Who Killed One the Gun? eventually comes to a conclusion, and one that in this ever-shifting drama seems appropriate. I’m not, of course, going to spill the beans: They’re for you to count, and cook with tomato sauce, garlic and onions, if you like. Besides: Who knows, in Little’s ever-shifting timescape, whether the conclusion will be the same tomorrow?
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Gigi Little will be in conversation about Who Killed One the Gun? with Margaret Malone, author of People Like You, at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 7, at Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W. Burnside St., Portland. The event is free.