Every Last Drop

Joe Pitt #4

by Charlie Huston

“[Charlie Huston’s] action scenes are unparalleled in crime fiction and his dialogue is so hip and dead-on that Elmore Leonard should be getting nervous.”
–Publishers Weekly (starred review), on Half the Blood of Brooklyn

It’s like a series of bullet-riddled bad breaks has seen rogue Vampyre and terminal tough guy Joe Pitt go from PI for hire to Clan-connected enforcer to dead man walking in a New York minute. And after burning all his bridges, the only one left to cross leads to the Bronx, where Joe’s brass knuckles and straight razor can’t keep him from running afoul of a sadistic old bloodsucker with a bad bark and a worse bite. Even if every Clan in Manhattan is hollering for Joe’s head on a stick, it’s got to be better than trying to survive in the outer-borough wilderness.

So it’s a no-brainer when Clan boss Dexter Predo comes looking to make a deal. All Joe has to do to win back breathing privileges on his old turf is infiltrate an upstart Clan whose plan to cure the Vyrus could expose the secret Vampyre world to mortal eyes and set off a panic-driven massacre. Not cool. But Joe’s all over it. To save the Undead future, he just has to wade neck-deep through all the archenemies, former friends, and assorted heavy hitters he’s crossed in the past. No sweat? Maybe not, but definitely more blood than he’s ever seen or hungered for. And maybe even some tears–over the horror and heartbreaking truth about the evil men do no matter who or what they are.

Praise for Charlie Huston and his Joe Pitt novels

“In conceiving his world (a New York City divided by vampire clans, each with different reasons to hate Pitt), Huston gives a fading genre a fresh afterlife. [] A.”
–Entertainment Weekly

“[Huston] creates a world that is at once supernatural and totally familiar, imaginative, and utterly convincing.”
–The Philadelphia Inquirer

Genres: Urban Fantasy, Vampires, Horror, Fantasy, Fiction, Mystery, Noir

252 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2008

About the author

Charlie Huston is an American novelist, screenwriter, and comic book writer known for his genre-blending storytelling and character-driven narratives. His twelve novels span crime, horror, and science fiction, and have been published by Ballantine, Del Rey, Mulholland, and Orion, with translations in nine languages. He is the creator of the Henry Thompson trilogy, beginning with Caught Stealing, which was announced in 2024 as a forthcoming film adaptation directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Austin Butler. Huston’s stand-alone novels include The Shotgun Rule, The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death, Sleepless, and Skinner. He also authored the vampire noir series Joe Pitt Casebooks while living in Manhattan and later California. Huston has written pilots for FX, FOX, Sony, and Tomorrow Studios, served as a writer and producer on FOX’s Gotham, and developed original projects such as Arcadia. In comics, he rebooted Moon Knight for Marvel, contributed to Ultimates Annual, and penned the Wolverine: The Best There Is series.

Reviews

[carol. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every starts with Joe's exile in the Bronx, and him dropping in on a post-baseball game exodus, parsing the crowd for Vampyres. He scents one and follows the trail, tracing it to a pack who has just attacked a woman. It's one of the neatest, heart-breaking series expositions I've read; it orients the reader to Joe, the Vampyre life and his moral struggle in an unusual way. Shortly after, he is meeting Esperanza, a tough Puerto Rican and the closest thing they have to a Vampyre boss up there. Or so he thinks, until he runs into a pack again and meets their sadistic maker. What follows was one of those hard scenes that Huston does so well. Creepy, fraught with violence and suspense, and when it finally goes down, it is both better and worse than expected. Huston is very skilled at making me uncomfortable without needing to pile on a load of details; a few carefully chosen words and I cringe.

Manipulations pull him back into the city, as Predo sends him to infiltrate the newest clan, Clan Cure, led by eccentric genius Amanda, now planning to save Vampyres from the virus. From there, he hits up a flophouse, running into Philip, his favorite snitch and crutch. Ah, Phil, a never-ending source of wry addict humor. "Man, this'll teach me to focus exclusively on the ups. I mean, fuck, I don't got a single painkiller in here." The last step in playing the angles is investigating the Coalition's mysterious blood supply that serves as uneasy lynchpin in the peace between clans. "I didn't pass math. Shit, I didn't pass anything. But I can figure that number in my head. Know what that number equals? Equals: Where the fuck to they get it all?

Joe is scrambling in this book, a desperate and subtle manipulation of playing everyone who wants to kill him off each other. He has a cockroach quality, in that almost nothing seems to kill him despite varied and numerous threats. Though he is dispassionate on the surface, he will take revenge. Really, that's another one of the brillances of Huston's writing; how he can imbue a seemingly detached character with emotional complexity. Though he later justifies his actions in terms of Evie, it's quite clear Joe has another, almost nihilistic ethical sense operating.

Huston's really hitting his writing stride with this one. I enjoyed the writing as much as the plotting, perhaps even more. I particularly relish when his 'gangsters' get a chance to share their stunning and sophisticated philosophies: "It is strange. That causing fear in others can help produce freedom. But it is also true. It clears a path before one. Creates space, a perimeter within which one can operate with abandon. I am not saying that it is true freedom. But it is a start."

A running metaphor about gravity and orbital bodies lends a sense of inevitability to the arc of Joe's actions. Evie is the black hole to his trajectory, unavoidable. "The gravity pulling from below Fourteenth doesn't go away... How you ignore a thing like that is, you move. Create momentum. Build velocity to carry your mass outside the influence of the body pulling at yours."

Ah, the characterizations. "The man breeds lies. He spawns them asexually, with no need for any assistance. He exhales and lies fill the air... he dreams in lies."

And the setting: "The bad things about a place like the Whitehouse, listed alphabetically, start somewhere around armed robbery, run past cockroaches and dirty needles, hit their stride with mass murder, start to tail off at rape, and end with a classic: zoophilia."

Really, I'm impressed at how much Huston accomplishes with his staccato style. Not always a comfortable read, but a decently plotted, characterized one with a surprising sophistication.

Book five: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Cross posted at http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2013/0...

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joe Pitt is really hitting the bottom this time. Exiled from Manhattan, Pitt finds himself living like a homeless person, trying to stay alive in the Bronx. And there is some real evil going on over there, some really sick stuff.

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the fourth of five books in the Joe Pitt series following Half the Blood of Brooklyn (my review). The series is a mashup of: dark, gritty, and ultra-violent noir/hardboiled detective/urban fantasy. This story continues to advance the long-term story arc, but does not bring the story to its close. Like its predecessor, I found it to be another filler. The ending is weak cliffhanger forcing a series reader to find closure with buying or borrowing My Dead Body (Joe Pitt #5) .

Note this book continues the series' tradition of saving trees. It’s a thin 250-pages, which is 25-pages more than its predecessor. Note only the first book, Already Dead (my review) was longer (barely) than 300 pages. At this point, I would have greatly appreciated the author having written a trilogy of ≥ 350 page books, rather than two skinny novels and three fat novellas. In addition, this book despite the valuable pages spent on backstory would be unintelligible to folks who have not been following the series in its publication order.

Prose is no different from the other books in the series. The author is writing in the noir/hardboiled style of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler although I see the inspiration of Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange . The Pitt protagonist’s POV is used throughout. Pitt’s dialog is laconic, although he doesn’t indulge in the noir/hardboiled use of wry similes. With Pitt so silent, the other characters provide the now serially annoying exposition. Descriptive prose is good. The author appears to have spent almost as much time on atmosphere as the first book in the series. Conversely, action sequences are not as well done in previous books. Their brevity was felt here. Finally, I did not laugh once while reading this book. Previous books in the series had one or more laugh-out-loud responses to the macabre humor. This story was un-funny.

This story includes sex references, modest alcohol abuse, and ultra-violence. The sex was 'talk' about sex and implied sexual violence. Pitt drinks “to forget” in this story, which I found to be uninteresting. Violence is graphic and pervasive. It consists of: physical, edged-weapons, and firearms mayhem in gory detail. Physical mutilation is described in excruciating detail. Body count is moderately high. Note that a peculiar form of trafficking is involved in the story which also involves sexual violence and violence upon children. This story is not a YA read.

The main characters include: Pitt, Evie (no last name), Terry Bird, Predo. The Count (name since forgetten) and Amanda Horde. Pitt, Evie (Pitt's love interest), Bird, Predo, Horde and The Count are carried over from the previous book(s). Most receive no real development, although both The Count and Evie in their new roles are the minor exception. The Bronx and Queens vampires are NPCs—they’re left to be forgotten. The exception may be the Queens vampire (Queen) Esperanza Benjamin?

Plotting sucked. I complained that the last book in the series, Half the Blood of Brooklyn was a filler—this one is too. The cover blurb’s “Joe has a bad break and gets sucked back into the maelstrom of Manhattan Vampyre [sic] politics, only to learn a ruinous secret ” (I’m paraphrasing here) was a better story than what hath the author wrought. Already understanding the dynamic between the “Old” vs. “New” vampires is an important story point. Most of the story was Pitt unwillingly traveling from the South Bronx back to his old stomping ground in lower Manhattan, out to Queens, then back to Manhattan. While working for The Cure proto-clan founded by Horde, Pitt learns the key “Old” vampire secret. He then kicks the hornets’ nest over on virtually all the established Manhattan vampire power blocks: Coalition, Society, and Enclave. Good news? Pitt finds some hope in getting the girl (back). The story ends precipitously with you needing to buy or borrow the final book ( My Dead Body (Joe Pitt #5) ) to find out what happens.

Plot holes large enough to drive a cement mixer (!) through abound. Despite my literary suspension of belief regarding the supernatural, too many folks that were not vampires knew the “Old” vampire secret for too long—like generations. How long can you keep a secret if you’ve got Goombahs from Queens working for you? Also, if Horde's Cure hostel has logistics problem's (loving detailed in paragraphs of narration), why isn't the Coalition fielding awkward questions about truckloads of foodstuffs being delivered to a cement plant? Another point is that vampires are all psychopaths. The leaders of the Coalition, Society, and Enclave would have thrown Pitt out into daylight (after a long-ish exposition) either the first time or the last time they met, kidnapped, or hijacked him, especially the last time.

The Rough Guide Tour of metro-New York is an edu-tainment draw for this series. Mentioned earlier stops on the tour included the: South Bronx , lower Manhattan, and Queens with both The Bronx and Queens being new to the series. Who cares about the Bronx and Queens? However, I continue to follow the story locations while reading, which are very accurate in their description. I ❤ NY.

This story was a second disappointment. Like its predecessors, the story is dark, dour, and gritty, with terse dialogue, blood and gore, and written to convey to folks a sub-culture on the edge of madness. (That’s the good part.) However, this is the second consecutive filler book with a dubious ending I’ve read in the series. Half the Blood in Brooklyn was the same nonsense. I did the addition; there are less than 1400 pages in the series’ five (5) books. Given Pitt’s terse dialog, and the chance for paring back the extra four (4) books-worth of backstory, and maybe tidying-up the long expository narrations clogging the overall story narrative; why couldn’t this series be a simple trilogy of 350-page books? Also, unlike with the other books in the series, I stopped laughing. I didn’t find anything in the story to be funny. Finally, Pitt escaping into a sewer with Bird, Prado and The Count after him is not an ending. Its no different than the last book's ending, where he escaped into the sewer of the South Bronx. So, this story was yet-another ‘place-holder’ in the series, which unfortunately you can’t do without. I’m going to read the last book in the series (My Dead Body), but only to vent my spleen on the series as a whole. In summary, if I didn't have to read it; I wouldn't have.

Readers interested in gore dripping, ultra-violence and vampires might be interested in Vampire$ by John Steakley.

[Gabriel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok, so this one was full of awkward sentences and phrasing. There were a few too many times when sections (just a couple of short paragraphs long) seemed disjointed and not quite understandable.

BUT ...

Joe Pitt (ne Cool, I swear) stuck off the island for a year of rogue vampiring. Then, he's brought back for reasons begun in book #3 (yeah, this is a series you NEED to read in the correct order). And this time, he doesn't get played ... he plays the others.

These books are gritty (as in, you need to take a shower after reading paying special attention to your fingernails gritty), dark, inventive, exciting and violent with a slight hint of humor. Of course I think of Harry Dresden when Joe Pitt fires back insult after insult to his superiors ... but unlike Dresden, Pitt's insults are not grounded in geekdom. No, Joe is just a genuine jerk. Still, I love him.

The best thing about this entry in the series was, Joe felt in control (not Charlie Huston, see my review on Half The Blood Of Brooklyn) the whole time. Even when he was shocked, he was in control. Huston did put together a wonderfully paced story. Little raises in the stakes every couple of pages, a recurring theme that takes a slightly different note each time it's played, the feeling of progression, a solo here and there to spice things up ... book is a frickin' Jazz song.

And I can hardly wait for the encore!

[Contrarius · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe that many readers don't like this book as much as the rest of the Joe Pitt series, but I am very impressed by it. However, one must have read the three preceding books in order to get full value from this one.

Every Last Drop is the book where we really start to see more of Joe's internal life. Throughout the series Joe is somewhat of an enigma. We see only flashes of what really motivates him, and many times he hardly appears to be human. But the facade begins to crack a bit more in this volume. He is injured both physically and emotionally, and we see more of what Joe is willing to endure in order to get what he wants and to help those he loves.

On the surface this is a grim and bloody noir series about battling vampire clans, and comparisons to Cormac McCarthy and Elmore Leonard are quite apt here. However, there is much more to these books than just the superficial text. When all five books are taken as a whole, they paint quite a gripping portrait of a severely damaged man battling his way through a brutal world, hanging onto the last shreds of his humanity as it is ripped away from him bit by bit. I'm probably going to have to read through the series again in order to really cement my thoughts about it, and that by itself tells me that there's a lot to think about and appreciate here.

[Maggie K · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to sit here for a while thinking what it was about these books I like so much....Joe's too jaded to like too much. He seems to get too focused on things, then all of a sudden you realize he has been dealing with the big picture all along. He doesnt share his thoughts but you realize he has been sitting there planning things once he gets in motion. How everything always ends up being about the girl he loves.

I'm talking a lot about Joe aren't I? Even though I said I didn't like him. Characterization is a wondrous thing. :)

[Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joe Pitt just doesn't know how to keep himself out of trouble and for this series that's a good thing. He's slowly losing body parts himself and that's probably appropriate given what he discovers in this book. Yeah, it's a transition book and we're just waiting for the final war to begin. Stumbling to the inevitable, prodded on by Joe himself, knowing we cannot stop here. So we race on to the next, and final, book in the series.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, that was dark. Really, really dark.

[Edward · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot happens in this chapter of Joe Pitt’s life. He’s in exile in the Bronx, all of his connections and friendships down the drain, his girl far away inside the Enclave stronghold. The only way back to make a deal with Dexter Predo to spy on the new clan known as Cure, who is ran by the girl he saved way back in the first book, Amanda Horde. Joe does these things, including making a deal with ex-friend Terry Bird, and lights a match to it all on his way out.

Huston does a great job stringing all of these threads together and setting the stage for the penultimate book in the series next. The meeting at the end between Pitt and Evie was bittersweet and the reveal about where everyone’s food comes from (blood) is completely shocking. I could feel Joe’s heartbreak and pure anger throughout the story. It’s a terrific book. I don’t know what else to say about it. I just love this series.

[Chuck McKenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely love all of the Joe Pitt novels, with their fresh and original depictions of vampire crime families carving out their territories in New York City. Fast-paced and extremely gory. There are no 'good guys' in these novels - only 'less nasty' protagonists who fill in for heroes. Highly recommended.

[Cameron · Rating 4 out of 5]

From Society to Rogue to Society to really really Rogue to playing everyone's damn field, Joe just can't seem to find a niche and hang tight, lay low, stay copacetic. It doesn't help that his mannerisms err on the side of painfully sarcastic and violently anticipatory. No wonder he gets his ass kicked to the wilds, no, not Brooklyn again, worse: to stay out of the sights of the Clans that individually each want his head on any damned platter available, Joe goes to the Bronx, a sort of homecoming that he gets a tad nostalgic over (yeah right) since it was where he was born.
It's really not all that much better in the Bronx though, especially since on several occasions Joe gets his ass handed to him. At least the Manhattan Clans only wanted his head. So with a bit of "gravity" dragging him back, he skips gayly back into Manhattan into the arms of enemies who want to use him like a tool (Dexter Predo can be really nasty when he wants to be, and I swear I think I saw Joe quiver at one point), former allies who want to fold him into their organizations and have a big lovefest or a crazy party (or both), and a former boss whom Joe has pushed to the brink. So what next? Blow up in the tool user's hands of course, bite the hand that wants to pet you, turn one crazy on another, and push your former buddy boss over that precipice. Simple. Messy. And you get to be the badass to a whole slew of badasses.

[Leslee · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. It's hard to believe how such a promising series devolved so quickly. In this addition to the Joe Pitt series, our titular character falls deeper in the middle of a convoluted mess of a turf war. Sela and Amanda are back, with Amanda being some sort of young genius with biomolecular and virus research. We also find out the Coalition's secret source for their vast quantities of blood.

Not going to go into much detail for this one because I'm saving it all for the grand finale on my review of the last book but needless to say that the series isn't really getting any better as it goes along. At this point I think that Huston is overreaching in his ability to continue and maintain the 'noir' tone while coming up with fresh material and storylines for each novel all while expanding the overarching plot. Will go into further detail on my review of the final book.

This is definitely a fourth book in the series. I have no idea how anyone could jump into the series by starting with this book and understand what the heck is going on.

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had the pleasure of moderating a panel with Huston, Charlaine Harris, and Marjorie Liu last week at the ALA convention. Huston was a funny speaker. It was easy to see where the humor and likability of a character, even one as nasty as Joe Pitt, comes from. I got the feeling that most of Huston's work in the future will be along the lines of straight noir, not stuff with a fantastic element, but we'll have to see.

In this installment, Pitt is at loose ends up in Queens, trying to get back to Evie and Manhattan. He makes some gruesome discoveries when he goes looking for the source of blood for the Coalition. The Count has gained power in The Enclave, and all out war between the vampire clans seems imminent. I have an advance copy of My Dead Body which will close the series. Can't wait to see how it all turns out!

[Ian Mathers · Rating 5 out of 5]

In which our protagonist tears down his entire world just to get back to/with the only person in the world he loves. Spoiler: It doesn't work.

This was the book, I guess, where Huston's noir roots really hit me - you like Joe, and you root for him, but he's not always (or even often) a good person. He doesn't always make choices that you would, or ones that are morally acceptable. Or sane. But, I mean, he's been telling you since the first book that not only does he live in the dark and drink blood, but that he was raised in an atmosphere of horrific abuse. Joe isn't an abuser himself, but he's also not normal, even by the standards of his world. I haven't read #5 yet, so this is just a suspicion, but at this point I don't know if I want there to be a sixth Joe Pitt book - let's just say that it feels like his story is drawing to an end.

[Ian Oliver Camiwet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book 4 in the Joe Pit series became better than its previous ones. Huston continues the fast paced, and violent story of the vampyre Joe Pit, and he just raised the stakes.

After returning from exile, Joe decides to come back from the Bronx a year later after the events in the previous books. And a lot has changed; Amanda Horde, the girl he rescued, has established a clan, but problems arise in maintaining it. She sent Joe into a mission, in which he discovers a great secret, that can bring the other organizations into war.

This is what I liked with these series, with fast pace, with no chapters, quotation marks, and total badassery that keeps your blood pumping. It's a really good read, and this is one of the vampire books that has a very good explanation about how the prosses works.

[Ramón Nogueras Pérez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Supongo que viendo el ritmo al que los estoy leyendo es suficiente reseña.

[Ben Truong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every Last Drop is the fourth and penultimate book in Joe Pitt series written by Charlie Huston. It centers on Joe Pitt, a private investigator and vampire who solves cases in a supernatural Manhattan.

Private Investigator Joe Pitt relations between the city's vampire clans are unraveling. The Cure is researching antidotes to the ravenous vampire-creating Vyrus, while the better-nourished Coalition seeks the Cure's downfall and the Society plays both sides. Dodging death threats and brokering shaky deals, Pitt shuttles among all three until he learns the Coalition's secret, a revelation so volatile that it may lead to all-out war.

Every Last Drop is written rather well. Huston supplies terse dialogue and convincing gore in expertly pitched prose. However, Pitt's enemies set their hate aside too easily at his appearance, and their rational behavior is at odds with the emotional intensity and sheer implausibility of the climax of the narrative. Regardless, it is wonderfully written filled with gore, which mixes urban fantasy, the supernatural and dark nior rather well.

All in all, Every Last Drop is written rather well and is a good continuation to what would hopefully be a wonderful series, which I plan to continue in the very near future.

[Zéro Janvier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Le quatrième roman des aventures de Joe Pitt commence un peu comme le précédent : lentement et sans grand intérêt pour moi. Je vais dire que le premier tiers m'a franchement ennuyé. C'est d'ailleurs le même schéma que dans le troisième volume : tout ce qui se déroule à Manhattan est plutôt intéressant, mais quand Joe Pitt s'aventure en dehors, je m'ennuie profondément. L'auteur se sent alors obligé de nous présenter des personnages qui sortent de l'ordinaire, des scènes d'action spectaculaires, mais finalement cela ne fait pas avancer l'intrigue.

Heureusement, ça décolle enfin par la suite. Ca décolle tellement que les événements commencent à se bousculer et qu'on sent que le cinquième et dernier roman sera agité, avec une guerre en approche entre les clans vampiriques de New-York. J'ai hâte de lire ça !

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fourth book of the Joe Pitt Series and it got even more bloody and gruesome. This book is darker and starts right of that way, when Joe who left Manhattan for the Bronx faces some of the locals. The new characters added fit right into this world.
When Joe gets back to his city he does what he needs to do, to archive his goals, and sees through the schemes of the others like Terry and Dexter Predo. It reminded me of the parts I liked so much in the first book, where I figured out what was going on, who was using him for what and tock agency about how the things progressed. There is somewhat of an ending for this book, but it is clear, that there was an overarching story starting in the third book and this is the middle part of it.
But it works better on its own than the last one.

[Waldemar Ingdahl · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Every Last Drop" kicks in a new gear to the Joe Pitt Casebook series. It is a sequel to "Half the Blood of Brooklyn", but the neo-noir PI and lonely vampiric troubleshooter premise of the previous books has definitely changed. The author Charlie Huston is taking the story into a new direction. It is still a hard-boiled thriller, but it is also adding an arching plot to the series.

This is a success for Huston, as the series picks up speed and suspence. Expectations are raised for the fifth, and final, part of the series.

[Rachael · Rating 1 out of 5]

I barely finished this book. I pushed through because I was hoping for an ending, some sort of resolution, and there wasn't one. This was so graphically violent I had to skip over some passages, I don't remember the other books being like that. I will never know how this current conundrum he is in resolves itself, and that's just fine with me.

[Ilias · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the 4th book of the series and I have to say I am disappointed. The style and the action is nice, but if feels something is missing. Still the same noir and ultra violent style. I am disappointed in the 3rd and 4th book, but I will finish the series. Hopefully the 5th book will make up for them.

[Petra Spies · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't want the series to end.

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wowzer...great series if you're in the mood for mean Vampyre..am really enjoying this series

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent continuation and build up to critical mass. I can't wait to see how the pieces fall in the next book.

[Katja · Rating 2 out of 5]

starting to get tired of the series...

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best Joe Pitt book so far, in my opinion. 4.5/5

[Jenny Coyne · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Debi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well... Joe is a hard man (vampire) to keep down, but this is some serious S@#%. It’s going to be really hard to keep the girl if your in exile and homeless.

[Paschalis]

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