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 popular concepts in the world of fiction, b... Read More

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 complicated as Joe finds himself caught in a brewi... Read More

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 that the world’s a much larger place than th... Read More

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 to take the gig. What’s the risk? Another... Read More

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 North American Hardcover publication of ... Read More