Already Dead: A Novel [Paperback]

That Charlie Huston is on the edge was evident in his debut, the unconventional "Caught Stealing" and its equally offbeat sequel, "Six Bad Things". In both, Huston writes with a hip and irreverent flair that is all his own, brutal tales of the seamy underbelly of life that are at the same time darkly and cynically humorous.

In "Already Dead", Huston applies his uncommon talents to a very common but wholly unexpected theme: vampires. The result could be described as the abominable offspring of a marriage of JR Tolkien and Quentin Tarrantino, a bizarre but refreshingly unique tale of the undead set in contemporary New York City. This is no Bram Stoker. Huston's vampires, or "vampyres", have neither fangs nor Transylvanian accents, and sleep in Manhattan apartments rather than coffins. Huston's ghouls are victims of the vampyre "vyrus", an infection that instills an irresistible craving for new blood, while at the same time cleansing the blood of all impurities. Thus explaining the legendary strength and immortally of the Vampire myth.

Joe Pitt is one that is "already dead", a forty-five year old New Yorker who looks twenty-five. Pitt and his ilk live, work, eat, and play among us, a virtual parallel universe of vampyre cults and clans that mirror New York's more conventional society. There is the "Coalition", the largest clan, corporate and business-like, suit-and-tie vampires ruling midtown from north of 14th Street up to Harlem. The "Society" inhabits the East Village. Progressive liberals, they are committed to diversity and the day when vampires are accepted in society - simply another minority like gays or the disabled. The "Enclave", the smallest but most feared, is a cult of extremists - a band of Zen Buddhist-like ghouls who hang out in a lower west side meat market warehouse starving themselves to an imagined spiritual passage to the another realm of blood lust depravity. And then there are biker-vampyres, homeys, Chinese and Italian vampire mobs, all controlling their own turf with varying degrees of influence and power. Filling out Huston's nightmare version of a Tolkien "Middle Earth" fantasy world are flesh eating zombies ("shamblers", or, in the politically correct jargon of the "Society", "Victims of Zombification") and a mysterious wraith. Like author Charlie Huston, Joe Pitt is ever the maverick, the rogue vamp refusing to align with any of the clans, living in Society territory while carrying out hits and dirty deeds for the highest bidder. When called upon by the Coalition's boss to help track down the runaway daughter of a Manhattan socialite, Pitt finds himself caught in the middle of warring clans of the undead while also questioning his own "life" and love choices, at least to the degree a vampyre chooses such things.

With tongue firmly in cheek, Huston spins this cleverly original yarn that is as rich in irony while every bit as raw and brutal as his first two efforts. At first the blood lust may leave the reader a bit squeamish, but you'll soon be pulling for Joe and forgetting about his rather nasty but uncontrollable habits. As evident in his other novels, the eccentric and sordid Charlie Huston isn't for everybody. But the brilliance of "Already Dead" will undoubtedly add new converts to his own growing cult of followers.

I met Charlie Huston while participating in a Comic-Con panel discussion about using monsters as protagonists. Charlie claimed that he had begun by writing a normal pulp novel, but that his main character got beaten up so badly and so frequently that he shouldn't even be walking, let alone getting into new scrapes. (This has been a perennial problem in pulps. Philip Marlowe gets knocked out or drugged at least twice a novel, but it never seems to bother him much.) How did Charlie solve the problem? By creating a whole new genre, vampire noir.

Joe Pitt is a vampire in a Manhattan secretly infested with vampires. Joe's Problem? He has several, actually. First, there's that zombie roaming his neighborhood. Then there's the grief he's catching from his girlfriend, Evie. Finally, someone has stolen his blood stash, someone who can walk through walls.

Part of Huston's genius lies in his ability to take classic fang-lit premises and run them to their logical conclusions. Take the notion that vampires live among us as a wealthy elite secretly controlling society, a thematic staple of the Blade comix and movies. Huston's embellishment? Yes, there's a vampire group that behaves like a corporation. But there are other groups, too. Vampire bikers. Vampire monks. Vampire mafia. He even gives us a collection of leftist vampire radicals, who provide some of book's funniest scenes and dialog. Or take Richard Matheson's notion that vampirism is caused by a virus. Matheson never speculated about whether this virus could be transmitted in ways other than biting. Huston does, and his answer is the cause of Joe's lady trouble.

But all of this is trivia for horror nuts like me. Anyone could pick up Already Dead and still get one heck of a read because it's real charm lies in its prose and in its characters, especially its supporting characters. There's Chubby Freeze, the pimp trying to improve his vocabulary with a word-a-day calendar. There's Lydia Miles, the feminist vampire who insists on finding a politically correct term for Zombies. There's Hurley, the sweet-tempered Irish thug who is much older than he looks. There's Daniel, the dangerous and enigmatic leader of the vampire monks, who has granted Joe membership whether he wants it or not. And at the heart of the story there is Evie, Joe's troubled girlfriend.

Like all noir protagonists, Joe must struggled simply to keep what he has. In Joe's case, that's independence from the various gangs. Any of them would take him in, and all of them want him dead for his refusal to join. Joe's need for Evie and a semblance of a human life is the true source of all his problems. And he can't even tell her about it for fear that he'd lose her.

Parents, please note, this book is not appropriate for young children or even faint-hearted adults. It contains violence, strong language, and people (well, vampires) with gender issues. I recommend this for teens who are already reading horror but haven't yet graduated beyond Steven King and Anne Rice.

I have long held a theory that the more a book makes me think, the better and more satisfying it is to me the reader. We all have favorite books, characters and stories. As I have grown older my tastes have changed drastically in most parts of my life. I have drifted to the left politically, become more sentimental, traveled the world and learned to love foods I wouldn't have fed my dog in past times. One of the things that doesn't seem to change for some reason is that books I liked and thought about and read and reread are still among my favorites. This book is destined to be one of these.

The characters are as real as any I have read before and drive the reader to "feeling" for them. Either hate or love, dislike or empathy, fear or loathing it seems that the important thing is that the reader feels for the characters and has some understanding of them. As this is a novel of Vampyrs I think it is a testament to Mr. Huston's skills as a writer. He makes the extraordinary believable and, more than that, he makes you think about the characters and story and draw parallels to life as we know it in the real world. It is a vampire novel, a hardboiled mystery and a political thriller all wrapped up in a treatise on life as a human being. Longing for the love you don't have, of dreams faded and gone, and of how our mortality has such an effect on our morality, in both positive and negative ways. He does it not by beating you over the head but by drawing out a story filled with people, who like people we know, deal with situations which polarize fellings and make us gather in cliques and gangs to avoid being alone. I look forward to more from Mr. Huston and the characters I have come to know so well.

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