Already Dead

Starred review from October 10, 2005
After two hard-boiled hits, Caught Stealing
and Six Bad Things
, Huston does an irresistible and fiendishly original take on the vampire myth. Manhattan is teeming with the undead, the island divided into often-warring vampire clans such as the Society, the Hood and the Enclave. The most powerful is the Coalition, whose goal is to protect its members from public scrutiny and persecution. Rogue PI Joe Pitt (aka Simon), who like all vampires is infected with a virus that requires him to drink blood regularly, is hired by Marilee Horde, a prominent New York socialite, to locate her runaway teenage daughter, Amanda, who may be slumming with homeless goth kids in the East Village. Meanwhile, a "carrier" is on the loose, infecting its victims with a bacterium that turns them into brain-eating zombies. The Coalition wants Pitt to find and destroy the carrier, since the carnage the zombies are causing brings unwanted attention to the undead community. Huston has fun playing with the conventions of the genre, creating his own hip update that will appeal to fans of Quentin Tarantino and Buffy the Vampire Slayer
alike.

July 15, 2005
Joe Pitt is a Vampyre on a mission. He inhabits the seamier side of Manhattan, but he knows how to survive. This tough-talking rogue knows all the city's players but refuses to join the various clans of undead. From time to time, however, he does a job for the main group, the Coalition. His latest task is to locate Amanda, the daughter of a wealthy and rather sordid individual named Dr. Dale Edward Horde. To find her, Joe must survive assaults by zombies (hungry humans afflicted by a body-rotting bacterium) and the nasty machinations of his own ilk. Huston's intricate, fast-paced, Chandleresque vampire-crime story has plenty of action, violence, and raw language. An excellent story but not for the squeamish in public libraries. [The novel will include a map of Huston's Vampyre New York City underworld. -Ed.] -Patricia Altner, Information Seekers, Columbia, MD

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2005
Joe Pitt is 45 but looks 28. His beauty secret? He's a vampire. Pitt resides on the Manhattan turf of the Society clan, which dreams of bringing vampires into the open and curing their virus. He also runs errands for the rival Coalition clan--stuff like snuffing zombies before they give the undead a bad name. He'd love to leave both clans behind but worries that "Vampyres in the suburbs last less than a year. Plus those places are soulless pits." He can eat garlic (although he hates it) and once drank holy water with no ill effects. Crosses are no problem, and he can see himself in the mirror. But if he steps into sunlight unprotected the virus will finish him, so he dons a white burnoose for daytime sojourns. But the dominant color is blood red as Pitt tracks a zombie bacteria carrier and endures inhuman torture in the process. Published only three months after the second entry in the author's kill-crazy Hank Thompson trilogy, this may be palate-cleansing sorbet for Huston. But it'll be a tasty treat for fans of vampire fiction and/or smart-alecky, hard-boiled crime novels.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)