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Already Dead (Joe Pitt #1)
"There's a shambler on the loose. Some fool who got himself infected with a flesh-eating bacteria is lurching around, trying to munch on folks' brains. Joe hates shamblers, but he's still the one who has to deal with them. That's just the kind of life he has. Except afterlife might be better word." "From the Battery to the Bronx, and from river to river, Man...more
MP3 CD, 1 pages
Published
July 1st 2008
by Blackstone Audiobooks
(first published December 27th 2005)
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1977. NYC. CBGBs. ramones on stage. some suit offers simon twenty bucks to let him suck his dick. sure: a mouth’s a mouth. simon pops off, and takes another twenty to give the guy a handjob. guy pushes his face into simon’s neck, bares his fangs, and – bam! – instavamp.
let that scene serve as a microcosm of this sloppy pulpy drunken joyride of a book: it’s kinda absurd having all this happen at the place in the year seeing the band... but it’s also kinda so fucked up and fun we ign...more
let that scene serve as a microcosm of this sloppy pulpy drunken joyride of a book: it’s kinda absurd having all this happen at the place in the year seeing the band... but it’s also kinda so fucked up and fun we ign...more
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I listened to the audiobook version, which was more of a nuanced reading than a fully voiced reading. It is definitely vampire noir, a dark, gritty read that is uncomfortable and violent and often inexplicable. Still, it is fascinating and leaves questions to be answered that the next book in the series should follow up on. There is a bit of a romance, which leavens it a tiny bit, but only a tiny bit and saves it from being truly depressing in the final chapter. The main character Joe Pitt i...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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ayrdaomei
rated it
·
review of another edition
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
fans of vampire myths
Recommended to ayrdaomei by:
Jacobi
Shelves:
finished
Well, it took about 3 months, but I'm finally through this one. I wasn't crazy about the story, and kept setting it aside (the opening, for example, is pretty damn gruesome) but I got invested enough in the protagonist to stick things out. Plus I wanted to finish something Jacobi recommended to me, you know, at least once ;)
It may have been the piecemeal way in which I read this book, but I had trouble keeping straight: 1.) all the different clans, and how they related to each o...more
It may have been the piecemeal way in which I read this book, but I had trouble keeping straight: 1.) all the different clans, and how they related to each o...more
Started out slow and simple, which was really bumming me out since Huston--one of my favorite authors--has more books in this series than any other. Fortunately the climax marked a return to form. Turns out there was more than met the eye to some of the characters. For example, I thought Terry and his enforcer Hurley were simplistic and unrealistic, but this is only the image they cultivate. I anticipate learning more of their backstory.
One interesting thing about reading Huston ...more
One interesting thing about reading Huston ...more
Dark, gritty, Joe Pitt is like noir PI mysteries... only Joe is a Vampyre (and low on the totem pole, at that). Unconventional, Huston weaves a compelling story that both satisfies and leaves you wanting more.
Let's see, shall we catalogue? I've read vampirism-as-viral-disease, vampires in tragic romance, modern-day wizard hunting vampires in Chicago, slapstick vampire love story, vampires helping defend London against the Blitz, vampire hunter who falls in love with a vampire and also a werewolf and starts screwing everything in sight so that while the first book was shelved in horror or maybe mystery, the more recent books in the series are shelved next to the Harlequin romances...
This o...more
This o...more
I've likened this author's writing to style to a blend of Quentin Tarantino and Cormac McCarthy. My previous experience with Huston was the Caught Stealing series which I thoroughly enjoyed. Huston has a penchant for hard-luck/case protagonists.
This book (first in the Joe Pitt series) has a lot in common with the Caught Stealing series. You have a wise ass rogue protagonist who happens to be a decent enough guy trying to do the right thing and who happens to take a lot of beatings al...more
This book (first in the Joe Pitt series) has a lot in common with the Caught Stealing series. You have a wise ass rogue protagonist who happens to be a decent enough guy trying to do the right thing and who happens to take a lot of beatings al...more
ALREADY DEAD is an unrelentingly brutal book. The protagonist, Joe Pitt, doesn't want to join any of the vampire clans that have carved up Manhattan like a pie. He's a lone wolf, trying not to make too many people angry at once, with nobody to turn to for help when he needs it. What does that mean? He gets threatened, a lot. And he gets beaten up - a lot. And mercy? Almost never.
ALREADY DEAD is the kind of book that keeps you compulsively turning the pages, holding your breath, caught...more
ALREADY DEAD is the kind of book that keeps you compulsively turning the pages, holding your breath, caught...more
This is Raymond Chandler meets Bram Stoker and, in fact, he thanks those two authors at the start of the third book in the series. This is a hardboiled private eye story, only in a New York City that has been turned to vampires. Every vampire or zombie book has to take the tropes of the genre and find a new conformation between them and our world, and I love the way Huston has done it. Rival gangs of vampires have divided New York, the un-bitten can't know about them, there's backstabbing and...more
First in the urban fantasy series, Joe Pitt, set in contemporary New York City.
The Story
Joe is such a sleaze. He does enforcement, collects on bad debts, hangs out in bars, and is trying to maintain his independence while living on one Clan's turf, the Society, which is led by an aging hippie type, and doing contract jobs for yet another Clan, the Coalition, representing the traditionalists.
It's a tough balancing act for Joe and gets worse when Predo, chief of the Coalit...more
The Story
Joe is such a sleaze. He does enforcement, collects on bad debts, hangs out in bars, and is trying to maintain his independence while living on one Clan's turf, the Society, which is led by an aging hippie type, and doing contract jobs for yet another Clan, the Coalition, representing the traditionalists.
It's a tough balancing act for Joe and gets worse when Predo, chief of the Coalit...more
Ok as a mystery, but some parts were confusing. I didn’t like Joe getting beat up all the time – too much of a victim.
STORY BRIEF:
Joe is a vampyre living in New York City. His vampyrism requires him to drink blood which he usually purchases but sometimes takes directly from humans without killing them. He also drinks and eats human food. The vampyres have divided Manhattan Island into several geographical areas. The vampyres north of 14th street belong to the gang called C...more
STORY BRIEF:
Joe is a vampyre living in New York City. His vampyrism requires him to drink blood which he usually purchases but sometimes takes directly from humans without killing them. He also drinks and eats human food. The vampyres have divided Manhattan Island into several geographical areas. The vampyres north of 14th street belong to the gang called C...more
I'm not the type of reader who immediately thinks that vamp-noir is going to be brilliant. Even before the sparkly books that shall not be named, vamps just aren't usually my favorites, but Huston is held in high regard amongst my friends so I checked his book out.
It might be damning with faint praise, but this book would be perfect for a short flight. It's definitely hard to put down as the story becomes more and more engrossing. The character development is natural and makes for s...more
It might be damning with faint praise, but this book would be perfect for a short flight. It's definitely hard to put down as the story becomes more and more engrossing. The character development is natural and makes for s...more
I stumbled on this series by total accident. One chapter in and I was hooked. I'm not sure I can even tell you exactly why, but I was.
This is one of those series that I think most people will either really like, or really loathe, without a whole lot in between. The plot, and the world in general, is complicated and sometimes hard to follow. The characters aren't always, or even often, likable, including the main character, and there are twists, turns, and mounds of frustration ar...more
This is one of those series that I think most people will either really like, or really loathe, without a whole lot in between. The plot, and the world in general, is complicated and sometimes hard to follow. The characters aren't always, or even often, likable, including the main character, and there are twists, turns, and mounds of frustration ar...more
Wow, so when i looked up this book, i just found out there were 3 more Joe Pitt books I haven't read and didn't know existed!! Score!
Let me say, i think these books are brilliant. But you're probably going to have to fit into a certain niche to like them-- Joe Pitt is a hard-boiled detective, straight Phillip Marlowe out of a Raymond Chandler book. He's also a vampire. So you've got this great pulp noire setting, manhattan split up into "turf" by vampire gangs, zombies, the w...more
Let me say, i think these books are brilliant. But you're probably going to have to fit into a certain niche to like them-- Joe Pitt is a hard-boiled detective, straight Phillip Marlowe out of a Raymond Chandler book. He's also a vampire. So you've got this great pulp noire setting, manhattan split up into "turf" by vampire gangs, zombies, the w...more
Sure it's a vampire book, but that shouldn't stop you from reading it. I joke. While garbage like Twilight pollutes the vampire genre, it's easy to get turned off from books about bloodsuckers. I took a risk and was handsomely rewarded with a gruesome and original story about a pseudo-detective/hired thug named Joe Pitt stuck in the middle of rival vampire gangs in New York City. He's dealing with a missing girl, a zombie outbreak, vampire politics, all while fighting his growing hunger to g...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Lasairfiona Smith
rated it
·
review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Vamp and PI adventure fans
For a free book, I am very impressed.
There are some very interesting elements in this book: bacteria for both vampires and zombies, fighting vamp groups that are more than just ancient feuds, and some twisted parents. I was very entertained by an exchange between vamps that included a bit about how zombies was a rude term and they should be called VOZ victims of zombification but even that implied that they were helpless. Seriously, a group of hippie vampires? Hysterical.
...more
There are some very interesting elements in this book: bacteria for both vampires and zombies, fighting vamp groups that are more than just ancient feuds, and some twisted parents. I was very entertained by an exchange between vamps that included a bit about how zombies was a rude term and they should be called VOZ victims of zombification but even that implied that they were helpless. Seriously, a group of hippie vampires? Hysterical.
...more
I got this book as a freebie download for my Kindle from Amazon.com. Warning to anyone compelled to do the same, there's not a single chapter or plot break in the entire book, which was mildly annoying. There was also no use of quotation marks as punctuation. Why? I haven't the foggiest notion. Maybe quotation marks and chapter breaks cost extra??
Already Dead is a dirty, gritty, gruesome, raw, slightly demented read; not for the squeamish nor the faint hearted. There is truly some di...more
Already Dead is a dirty, gritty, gruesome, raw, slightly demented read; not for the squeamish nor the faint hearted. There is truly some di...more
Gritty, hard-boiled crime novel, but in this our P.I. is a Rogue Vampyre, cracking the case while negotiating the many vamp hierarchies and fighting off the worse side effects of the Vyrus.
I really enjoyed this book - the world of the many low-lives and seedy hangouts that Pitt, our protagonist, is embroiled in seems straight from the pages of any noir, and the twists and turns in the case he's taken on are well thought out and executed. I loved the many different factions of the vam...more
I really enjoyed this book - the world of the many low-lives and seedy hangouts that Pitt, our protagonist, is embroiled in seems straight from the pages of any noir, and the twists and turns in the case he's taken on are well thought out and executed. I loved the many different factions of the vam...more
#1 Joe Pitt series - Vampire/UF (Library Book)
This is a reread, as I wanted to refresh my memory before continuing with this series.
Already Dead is a gritty, violent, hard-boiled "noir" mystery, featuring Joe Pitt, PI and vampire. Joe is going it alone by refusing to join any of the various Manhattan vampire coalitions, clans or cult-like groups. He keeps an uneasy peace with the various factions, "uneasy" being the key word.
In Book 1, th...more
This is a reread, as I wanted to refresh my memory before continuing with this series.
Already Dead is a gritty, violent, hard-boiled "noir" mystery, featuring Joe Pitt, PI and vampire. Joe is going it alone by refusing to join any of the various Manhattan vampire coalitions, clans or cult-like groups. He keeps an uneasy peace with the various factions, "uneasy" being the key word.
In Book 1, th...more
The phrase “noir vampire detective story” is more likely to elicit a groan than glee nowadays. Sadly, it’s become the realm of (and this is not a chauvinist term) horror “chick-lit,” with tough and not-afraid-to-be-sexy heroines dealing with the creatures of the night, blind dates and existential crises amid bad hair days and “What color should I wear with this sexy crossbow?” dilemmas.
Charlie Huston’s ALREADY DEAD is not this. ALREADY DEAD is an ass-kicking, throat-ripping, bloodlust-...more
Charlie Huston’s ALREADY DEAD is not this. ALREADY DEAD is an ass-kicking, throat-ripping, bloodlust-...more
Once I pressed PLAY there was no hitting STOP... this was an excellent audio book. A movie playing out in my head as I listened. I was immediately involved with the story and had no trouble getting "into" the main character Joe Pitt. He is likable tough and dark a real bad a$$ who is just trying to get through his life with the cards he's been dealt as best he can while remaining a free man who is true to himself amd doing his best to work around the system of turf wars/gang leaders. H...more
Hey, we've had vampires everywhere else, why not in the hard-boiled detective novel?
Joe Pitt is more of a fixer, a rogue vampire who tries to play between the lines of competing factions by making himself useful to all of them from time to time. He has an ugly past, a human girlfriend with HIV, and a strong urge for social justice despite his gruff surface demeanor. In this first book in the series, he gets involved with zombies, an unhappy wealthy couple whose daughter is missing, a...more
Joe Pitt is more of a fixer, a rogue vampire who tries to play between the lines of competing factions by making himself useful to all of them from time to time. He has an ugly past, a human girlfriend with HIV, and a strong urge for social justice despite his gruff surface demeanor. In this first book in the series, he gets involved with zombies, an unhappy wealthy couple whose daughter is missing, a...more
Initially, I was hesitant to read this book. It was suggested to me, and after doing some quick research, I found that Already Dead is located in the Mystery section. Although I have nothing against mysteries, I thought that the mystery aspect of the story would overshadow the vampire aspect. Thankfully, this was/is not the case.
Huston’s writing style is unlike any I’ve come across. Curt. Firm. Strong. He gives detail where detail is needed. The plot is always moving, never stalling....more
Huston’s writing style is unlike any I’ve come across. Curt. Firm. Strong. He gives detail where detail is needed. The plot is always moving, never stalling....more
Joe Pitt, the lead character in Already Dead, is a vampyre. He lives in a city where the vampyres have split into various gangs. They jockey for power while hiding their identity from regular humans. Pitt is like a vampyre detective. He's a rogue vampyre who refuses to affiliate with any one gang. And so he works for them all.
The story was fast moving and well-written. There's mystery, suspense and humor to go along with the bloody paranormal stuff.
I read the e-book, wh...more
The story was fast moving and well-written. There's mystery, suspense and humor to go along with the bloody paranormal stuff.
I read the e-book, wh...more
The mythos that Huston creates in this first book of his Joe Pitt series is a welcome precursor to that which Charlaine Harris/True Blood has created. Here, vampires exist but have not yet made themselves known to the general public. There are several beliefs among those infected with the Vyrus - some wish to assimilate, other wish to dominate and yet other wish to deny themselves their nature, thereby transcending their affliction to become an ultimate force. Joe Pitt is none of these; he is...more
If you like the movie Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart I think you will like this book. It is a Sam Spade type of detective story where Joe is a great hero and is trying to deal with vampire politics and his own personal demons. I think Huston created an original story about vampires/zombies and these conditions come from biological viruses. This book is very macho with girls with a nice butt and tight shirt serving beer and a lot of tough guy kind of lines. For me this is a welcome break fro...more
I checked this book out of the library because I like the Dresden Files and this was recommended to me as similar. What it has in common is a detective story with a paranormal detective - a vampire named Joe. Similarities end there. This is more like a mafia story that anything else I can think of. The "detective" is pretty much an enforcer for hire - a thug without too many qualms to weigh him down. He lives in alphabet city in NYC, one of about 4000 NYC citizens infected with a vam...more
Actually, this gets a 3.0 for general literature, a 4.0 for procedurals/detectives/crime, and a 5.0 for vampire books. It's actually the first vampire I've read since "interview" and it was pretty good for what it was -- a "noir" where the world weary, hard boiled PI just happens to be a vampire. NYC is divided into various vampire clans (read: mobs). All are trying to keep a low profile as they do their various things: there are mafia-like clans, biker, lefty and LGBT clan...more
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Charlie Huston is an American author of Noircrime fiction. However, according to a recent interview with Paradigm, he prefers to be classified as a writer of Pulp, due to how he writes.
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“One day, when I am a braver man, I will tell her these things, and then I will look her in the eye tell her I love her and ask her to be only mine. But until that day, we're just friends.”
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