My Dead Body

If you are looking for the definition of hard-boiled noir fiction, you do not have to go much further than Charlie Huston. In the Joe Pitt Casebook series, of which MY DEAD BODY is the last installment, Huston successfully blends together mystery and horror and delivers readers with a classic, original and, to put it mildly, bloody series. The first line of MY DEAD BODY perfectly defines a noir story: "If you're listening to this, I'm dead." It is hard to put a book down at that point. Our protagonist has fallen upon hard times. Indeed, he is gradually falling apart and is now missing an eye, a toe, and suffers from a broken knee. We learn that Joe is trading his body parts in order to locate a non-infected pregnant girl who might be carrying a baby infected with the virus that creates Vampyres. Joe is a man with a price on his head and living in a train tunnel on the Upper West Side, feeding as needed off the other lost souls of subterranean New York. "And when this started, I was a secret. Lived in an apartment, just like you. Well, just like you if you kept a mini-fridge of blood. When it ended I was living in a sewer. Downward mobility being a danger to my kind." He tells us this in a voiceover reminiscent of classic film noir tinged with a sense of horror that is new to the genre. One of the things that makes this series so fresh and original is that these are not your black cape, bad teeth vampires. Joe says to the reader at one point, "No monsters in this world. Just us people." These people have been infected by an HIV-like virus that created their thirst for blood. They have allied themselves in secret, powerful clans to provide mutual aid for one another. But humans are territorial by nature, and disputes are inevitable. It is Joe's earlier work first as a private eye, then as an enforcer for The Society clan, and finally as a traitor that has landed him in his precarious position at the start of MY DEAD BODY. Now, due in large part to Joe, long-time tensions between the clans have erupted into outright civil war over the missing girl. Some want to use the girl and her child as a symbol of cooperation and unity between the non-infected world and the infected. Others see the girl as a threat to be eliminated since she will bring the wraith of the non-infected world down upon them. And a third group sees the unborn child as needed for scientific experimentation and discovery. But Joe's sole concern is the only person in the world he loves, Evie, who he saved in a previous novel from AIDS by giving her his infected blood to kill the disease. Now she has taken refuge in the Enclave, a mystical, possibly insane, collective of Vampyres. Evie sends words to Joe that she wants him to help find the girl, a request that he accepts just so he can see her one last time. Another brilliant feature of this series is that Huston exploits the urban legends and paranoia of a city like New York perfectly. People racing by on subway trains can't help

Wow. This is #5, the last book of the Joe Pitt series. and my oh my...what a series it turned out to be. I imagine that if you're reading this you've been with the series since the begining or is currently making your way through it. Pick this up quick, it wraps up the story and finishes the Vampyre war that's been ready to boil up since the start.

The five Joe Pitt novels are extraordinary examples of stylistic prose and horror noir at their best. "My Dead Body" is designed to end the 5 novel arc and as such, it ties a lot of loose ends together but the casual reader should be advised that "My Dead Body" is not a good novel to first experience this excellent series. In fact, each subsequent novel has become murkier and more entangling than the previous entry and there are parts of this finale that become deeply metaphysical and philosophical. And be forewarned, Huston writes in a sparse economical manner, usually in the first person, and the dialogue flows in real time without each character's comments being identified textually which can lead to confusion at times for the inattentive reader. His styling is in a "stream of consciousness" mode that sometimes seems to leap off the page and in other instances the reader is forced to reread the paragraph to get the proper character identified as the speaker. In "My Dead Body", Charlie Huston continues the disturbing portrait of his new strangely intriguing world in which gang-like "clans" of vampires (humans who have been infected with the Vyrus) have divided Manhatten Island into territories and fiefdoms, each with its own governing structure, borders, spheres of influence, and purpose in existing. Huston has effectively created a world where vampires coexist with unknowing humans and where the sociological, psychological, and philosophical conflicts between individuals and between clans make for stunning parodies and commentaries on our lifestyles. Indeed, the loyal reader often forgets the vampire/blood dependence angle as the action and the emotions mirror those of any great noir novel that visits eternal themes of loyalty, betrayal, greed, and passion. Joe has been hiding underground since the action in "Every Last Drop" where he initiated a war among the vampyre clans when he agrees to return to the dangerous world above to rescue Chubby Freeze's daughter who has been impregnated by her vampyre boyfriend--the possibilites of that child are enormous; however, Joe's real motivation is to please his old girl friend, Evie, and to see her once more. Within steps of returning to the surface world, Joe is embroiled in danger, double crosses, and gore as, seemingly, all the clans and all the major characters from the previous novels want to see him dead. Through artful and not so artful negotiations and manipulations, Joe soon has everyone at one another's throats (no pun intended). While trying to survive and rescue the young couple, Joe stumbles upon a secret developed by Amanda Horde's research that could effectively destroy the entire world as the vampyres know it. Loyal readers of the series will experience the savagery of the Coalition, the Society, The Enclave, and The Hood at war with each other and with Joe. Similarly, Huston ties up the loose ends involving Digga, Predo, Terry Bird, Hurley, the Count, Sela and the rest

In a time when the word Vampire usually makes you wanna gouge somebody's eyes out or at least rack down Robert Pattinson and gut him, thankfully Joe Pitt returns in his fifth sun blisteringly brilliant novel. No gothic romance, no effete eurotrash vampires drinking wine and raping you with their eyes, this a hard boiled detective story set in a contemporary New York and even that doesn't nearly cover it. Very few stories maintain your interest for a 2 or 3 book arc but the Joe Pitt series has never disappointed over a 5 book arc. The fact that Charlie Huston manages to pull all this together for the last book is quite the feat. All sub plots tidied up, he doesn't let down fans of the series in anyway. The beauty of this book is, its told and written in such a way you could pick it up without reading the other four and it would make perfect sense. Read the other four, read this, read his other books. Charlie Huston is the genre writer I didn't know I was waiting for, but I am so glad he's here.

This is the fifth and final book in the Joe Pitt series. Pitt is a vampyre in Manhattan. Vampyres are much more infected than they are mystical. They lead a harder life than they do in other stories. No Twilight or Sookie-style vampires here. This world of vampyres is a hard one, where only the strong survive (And even then, just barely.) The Island is an enclosed community of vampyres, geographically sectioned off and ran by different clans. Joe starts off in the series as a troubleshooter for the different clans, but not beholden to any one group - rare, but Joe's skills in handling the "dirty work" make his existence outside of clan politics possible. Each book is self-contained, but does have an overall story from the first book to the last. Things happen in every book that shakes up Joe's world, so although you can read the series out of order, it's better to start at the beginning. These books are definitely hard boiled. Joe's character reminds me of Parker from Richard Stark's books. He does whatever he has to survive or to accomplish his goal. Huston has created one of the greatest hard cases in modern fiction. And I don't want to shortchange the world he has created. The political workings of the clans, the explanation of how being a vampyre works, etc - make it easy to immerse yourself into this world. I don't want to spoil ANY of the series, let alone the final book. So let me just say "My Dead Body" is a great book in series of great books, that does a fantastic job of finishing up the story of Joe Pitt. Also - if you like this series, please also read the Hank Thompson trilogy by Charlie Huston. They're pretty amazing as well.