Already Dead: Charlie Huston

Joe Pitt is not your average bloodsucker. He's big, mean, a smartass, a loudmouth and always ready for a fight regardless of who his opponent is. When his opponent ends up being three opponents, and shamblers - zombies - to boot, he's ready for them. They go down quick and the human that was supposed to be their meal ends up supplying Joe with a few pints.

Problem is, Manhattan is home to four thousand Vampyres, divided into separate clans. Joe is a Rogue, a clanless Vampyre. So when the Coalition, the clan that's staked out Manhattan from 14th to 110th, tells Joe that his job is to cover the mess he made waxing the zombies and find the shambler responsible for creating them, Joe has no choice but to listen. And when a human high-society woman uses her Coalition contacts and hires Joe to preform his sometimes-private detective role to find her missing daughter, Joe has no choice but to agree to it. And when the Society, Joe's old clan, starts making a play for Joe to take back his old job as chief headcracker...it's going to become awfully difficult for Joe to manage all his obligations before the city's overrun with shamblers or he finds himself staked out in a Jersey parking lot.

Already Dead marks Charlie Huston's first Joe Pitt/Manhattan Vampyre novel. It's a quick read at a little less than 300 pages but non-stop with vampires, zombie, junkies, trannys, brutal violence, copious amounts of bloodletting and just all-around bad-assery by the protagonist. A lot of character development is left up reflective conversations and the establishment of setting and environment (such as Joe's first floor apartment holding the trapdoor to his secret basement apartment and the descriptions of both) are told in a shorthanded hardboiled style that detail enough to get the picture in your head but not enough to bore you.

It's all here - plot twists, double crosses, a narrator/anti-hero protagonist you can't help but like and an great love interest - an HIV positive girl who may be able to be cured by Joe's blood...or killed by it, as the Vyrus that makes humans into Vampyres kills more people than it turns. Huston has a lot of fun playing with these concepts and it shows in this book. A nice sense of dark humor keeps things from ever getting too dry and all in all, the tired vampire concept gets some nice fresh twists to it and make Already Dead one to not be missed.

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Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Del Rey (December 27, 2005)
ISBN-10: 034547824X
ISBN-13: 978-0345478245
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