Joe Pitt Casebooks
Joe Pitt Casebooks — (2005-2009) Publisher: Those stories you hear? The ones about things that only come out at night? Things that feed on blood, feed on us? Got news for you: they’re true. Only it’s not like the movies or old man Stoker’s storybook. It’s worse. Especially if you happen to be one of them. Just ask Joe Pitt. There’s a shambler on the loose. Some fool who got himself infected with a flesh-eating bacteria is lurching around, trying to munch on folks’ brains. Joe hates shamblers, but he’s still the one who has to deal with them. That’s just the kind of life he has. Except afterlife might be better word. From the Battery to the Bronx, and from river to river, Manhattan is crawling with Vampyres. Joe is one of them, and he’s not happy about it. Yeah, he gets to be stronger and faster than you, and he’s tough as nails and hard to kill. But spending his nights trying to score a pint of blood to feed the Vyrus that’s eating at him isn’t his idea of a good time. And Joe doesn’t make it any easier on himself. Going his own way, refusing to ally with the Clans that run the undead underside of Manhattan — it ain’t easy. It’s worse once he gets mixed up with the Coalition — the city’s most powerful Clan — and finds himself searching for a poor little rich girl who’s gone missing in Alphabet City. Now the Coalition and the girl’s high-society parents are breathing down his neck, anarchist Vampyres are pushing him around, and a crazy Vampyre cult is stalking him. No time to complain, though. Got to find that girl and kill that shambler before the whip comes down… and before the sun comes up.
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Already Dead by Charlie Huston
Going in, I was super-confident that this series was going to be right up my alley and I wasn’t disappointed in the least. For starters, that same unflinching Tarantino-esque dialogue, urban vernacular and stylized violence that I loved so much from The Shotgun Rule were on display here in all of its explicit glory. Even better, there was a much more pronounced noir influence — Joe’s first-person narrative, crime / mystery subplots, a frequent use of flashbacks, Manhattan’s seedy underworld setting — running in the book and I absolutely love noir! You know what I love even more though… vampires. And that’s the defining gimmick in Already Dead. Joe Pitt, a fairly typical blend of resident fall guy and sardonic bad-ass, is a Vampyre…
Vampirism remains one of the more... Read More
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No Dominion by Charlie Huston
It’s been a year since the fallout at the end of Already Dead and Joe’s been taking it easy, staying out of trouble. After all, when the Coalition’s spymaster Dexter Predo and the Society’s head of security Tom Nolan are out for your blood, it’s probably best to keep a low profile. Unfortunately, Joe’s blood stash is running low, jobs have been scarce, and he’s just learned from his HIV-positive girlfriend Evie that her disease has taken a turn for the worse. So he does the only thing he can think of — go back to his old pal Terry Bird, the leader of the Society, and ask for a little help. What he gets is a clandestine mission to find out about some new “high” called Anathema that is specifically for Vampyres. As one might expect if you know anything of noir, what starts out as a simple reconnaissance becomes dangerously compli... Read More
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Half the Blood of Brooklyn by Charlie Huston
So far Joe Pitt has had some pretty wild adventures and along the way he’s proven time and again to be one tough SOB. Still, even a tough SOB has a breaking point and in Half the Blood of Brooklyn we get to learn first-hand just what that breaking-point is. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Starting back at the beginning, another year has gone by and during that time Joe has firmly resumed his role as enforcer for Terry Bird and the Society. Life should be good right!? I mean, Joe’s got a steady gig now, which means Clan protection, not having to hunt for his own blood, and an income that he can use to pay for his girlfriend’s treatments. Ah, but this is Joe Pitt we’re talking about here, professional shit-magnet. So trouble’s just a stone’s throw away.
First, the Clans discover th... Read More
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My Dead Body by Charlie Huston
PLOT SUMMARY: Nobody lives forever. Not even a Vampyre. Just ask Joe Pitt. After exposing the secret source of blood for half of Manhattan’s Vampyres, he’s definitely a dead man walking. He’s been a punching bag and a bullet magnet for every Vampyre Clan in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, not to mention a private eye, an enforcer, an exile, and a vigilante. But now he’s just a target with legs.
For a year he’s sloshed around the subway tunnels and sewers, tapping the veins of the lost, while above ground a Vampyre civil war threatens to drag the Clans into the sunlight once and for all. What’s it gonna take to dig him up? How about the search for a missing girl who’s carrying a baby that just might be the destiny of Vampyre-kind. Not that Joe cares all that much about destiny and such. What he cares about is that his ex-girl Evie wants him... Read More
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Sleepless by Charlie Huston
CLASSIFICATION: Sleepless is a classic crime/mystery story set in a post-apocalyptic milieu afflicted by a unique illness. Think Dennis Lehane meets José Saramago’s Blindess and P. D. James’ The Children of Men meets Richard K. Morgan.
FORMAT/INFO: Sleepless is 368 pages long divided over thirty numbered chapters and an Epilogue. Narration is in the first-person via a sixty-year-old, ex-military freelance mercenary named Jasper, and in both the third and first-person (in the form of journal entries) of undercover cop, Parker “Park” Haas. Sleepless is self-contained. January 12, 2010 marks the Nort... Read More
Charlie Huston is also the author of the 
