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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.… (more)
User reviews
I've never been that keen on vampires and zombies, and more or less gave up on vampire novels after reading a few Anne Rice novels back in the early 90s; little did I know that pop culture was only beginning to flirt with what was to become an unquenchable thirst for tales of the undead, and that the market would be flooded, pandemic-like, with unlimited variations on the shiver-inducting sagas of the bloodlusty twilight creatures. Charlie Huston's take seems original though. There's a decidedly noirish twist on the way Joe Pitt gives his first-person account of what seems like an almost plausible interpretation of how these creatures come into being and go about their business. The copious and astoundingly sickening violence is not for the faint of heart, and while I have a high tolerance for such things in the right kind of context, there were several times when I felt my already generous boundaries being stretched to the outer limits. But Joe Pitt, at the end of the day, is believable to me. I've met his kind in my former life as and out-and-about creature of the night. He's bad, there's no doubt about it, but he's a good kind of bad, and I have sympathy for his cause. I'll be back for more.
Hyper-violent, and not for the squeamish. Lots of yech-ptui sexual deviance. Plenty of "Reservoir Dogs"-style torture and cruelty.
In the end, I think it's got
Written in a first-person noirish style, this is a very fast-paced read that offers something slightly different to the supernatural mystery genre. I'd read a couple of books from Charlie Huston's other series so the writing style was quite familiar and anybody who has read any of the Hank Thompson books will recognise the similarities between the two anti-hero protagonists. If you enjoyed one series then you will more than likely enjoy the other. If you are even just a little bit squeamish then you probably won't like the blood that flies around which doesn't always end up down a vampyre's throat. Despite this, this was a very easy book to read and I will look forward to reading more from the Joe Pitt series.
ALREADY DEAD is the kind of book that keeps you compulsively turning the pages, holding your breath, caught between anticipation and dread. Joe is a tough guy, capable and smart, but it's him against the world and those are bad odds. He makes his living picking up odd jobs, usually the kind of work other vampires want nothing to do with - in this case, killing a pack of zombies and saving a runaway child.
The clans take on the characteristics of the neighborhoods they inhabit - the snooty Coalition, in suits and limos on the Upper East Side, the free-thinking queer/anarchist/hippie contingent in the village, the hip gangsters running Chinatown and the ascetic, spiritualized Enclave in Chelsea and the Meatpacking district.
ALREADY DEAD is almost painfully hip. I live in the city and there was a part of me that couldn't help but roll my eyes every time he mentioned the Beauty Bar or the good old days at Limelight, hanging out in Tompkins Park and the Odessa Diner. But you've got to give the guy credit - he may flaunt it, but he's got it. He knows the city, and he knows the hotspots.
There is one bright spot in Joe's life - his girlfriend, Evie. They've got a great relationship going on, and Evie is a doll. What's the catch, you ask? Evie is HIV positive. Joe could turn Evie into a vampire and cure her - but he's not ready yet to tell his girlfriend that he's a blood-sucking creature of the night.
I liked it a lot, can't wait to read the next installment in the series.
Joe Pitt is a Vampyre (Huston's spelling) in an alternate reality Manhattan where
Joe is a bit of an independent contractor, in a Manhattan where all of the Vampyres have joined clans. Joe is given two jobs: find a runaway 14 year old girl, and find a carrier that is infecting people with a bacteria that turns them into zombies. (And who doesn't love zombies, really?). The two cases are, of course, related.
The book gritty and graphic, which is a little off-putting. The writing is informal, with numerous run-on sentences, but this fits Joe's world and Joe's personality.
It appears that Already Dead is the beginning of a series. I'm not sure I'll read any more in the series, but Huston does a solid job of setting up a world, characters, and ethos, and I am at least passingly curious concerning what becomes of them.
It's a fast, fun fiction and now I'm all set to read the next in the series (No Dominion).
I think we'll find that reviews of this book will tend to use the words 'noir' and 'gritty' a lot. The tone of the book is very much like a Dashiell Hammett novel; the
While I think this book will definitely appeal to fans of other supernatural series, it has a very different feel. The Kim Harrison books or the Kelley Armstrong books almost seem a bit whitewashed in comparison—this book puts all the violence and unpleasantness right up in your face, and fairly non-stop. If you imagine a Sam Spade book updated for the times so that all the mayhem and sex wasn't off-camera, that would give you and idea.
This one's worth a try.
Gritty setting and characters, fast paced, gripping story telling. Uses the vampire as virus theme, but works it as an active disease.
Good
I like Charlie Huston and read his Hank Thompson novels quickly. I think if I have a criticism of this book it would have to be I felt that Joe Pitt and Hank Thompson were essentially the same character. If I read more of Huston and find that his characters are all the same, I may not read many more... but that being said, it is a great hard-boiled, blood and guts, no holds-barred vampire novel.
On a side note, this is the first book I have read on my iPod
This book has several things which should give it a mark or two in my scorecard. The first, a hard, hyper-violent, hyper-sexualized world of a noir P.I. I've read every Chandler, most Hammet, Cain, Spillane, Stark - I love the look and feel of that kid of story. Fantasy worlds with rival factions, crime novels with rival gangs, swords, sorcery and the works? Add into this a biological twist on the vampire/zombie dynamic? I'm in.
Huston misses the mark. He had a mark about the size of a bull, and missed it. It begins with Joe Pitt's narration - over-blown and whiny. Joe Pitt, make no mistake, is not a private investigator. Joe Pitt is semi-talented tough guy, more on the semi-talented than tough. When a author has to constantly reassure both the reader of his character's toughness, I cease to believe he's tough. Add in the half-baked plot twists, denegrating remarks to his own literary genre, violence that relies on his flat out shock value rather than true horror - I didn't buy into it.
I may have the curiosity to stick around one or two more novels - Hurston has a big enough fan base to write three or four more books. Or I may travel to greener pastures
The various vampire gangs and territories add a nice touch to dark heart of the novel--shades of Puzo's "The Godfather" and Yurick's "The Warriors."