Manhattan, it seems, is the heart of a city teeming with bloodsuckers and zombies. Nothing new there then. Charlie Huston has successfully managed to combine the hard-boiled detective sub-genre with a classic vampire narrative and come out with something that is fresh, well-written and exciting. I loved it.
Our protagonist is Joe Pitt, a vampyre of some years standing and also a private detective of sorts, who is charged with tracking down the whereabouts of a fourteen year old girl. She is the rich-girl daughter of one of the most powerful men in the city and Joe cannot afford to get it wrong. Behind this central storyline Joe is also placed with the task of finding a ‘shambler’ (zombie if you prefer) who is infecting various low-life's in the city. He is helped by his vampyric strength and agility but hampered by the fact that somebody has stolen his stash of blood ……
Like all good noir storylines Already Dead has a repertoire of untrustworthy characters. It is full of back-stabbers and double-crossers. It seems that everybody is on the take or would like to be. The city is a jigsaw puzzle of alliances and vampyre clans with territories (literally marked out on a map) and boundaries that are strictly kept to and enforced. Joe, who doesn't want to be affiliated to any particular clan, has to trip a particularly fine line between the factions in order to survive. Huston doesn’t pull punches with his descriptions of the violence that Joe faces. Nor can the language be seen as anything other than adult in tone and content. But the violence and profanity adds to the realism and the overriding sense of impending doom.
Huston's vampyrism has a scientific explanation. A vyrus is responsible and this has to be regularly ‘fed’ with fresh blood otherwise the vyrus will start to consume the host. It also means that he cannot have sexual contact with another without infecting them also. Luckily (or rather unluckily of course) his girlfriend is HIV positive and shares Joe’s fear of any sexual relations.
I've joined the Joe Pitt saga rather late as Huston has written another four books in the series. But if Already Dead is anything to go by then I will definitely enjoy the rest. The pace is just right and the quality of the narrative is first-rate. Roll on No Dominion.
Rating: 9 out of 10
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