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-inducing detective yarn that takes familiar concepts and smashes them together to tremendous effect. Joe Pitt is a New York vampyre (that’s how Huston spells it, and I don’t want to piss him off) eking out a living between the warring undead clans of New York, and when he stumbles upon a zombie shambling out of a neighborhood pizza joint, he unwittingly takes a step into some of the baddest business he’s ever seen.

Now, the conventions of ALREADY DEAD aren’t exactly new. The vampyre clan stuff can be found everywhere from role-playing games to the BLADE movies, and certain conventions have to be followed when you whip out a noir detective story. But these vampyre clans aren’t bland, androgynous wusses in flowing velvet gowns; they’re businessmen, activists and bikers, and the web of deceit that Pitt uncovers isn’t a color-by-numbers SPENSER: FOR HIRE plot, but a well-conceived variation on traditional noir themes. Vampyre or not, Joe Pitt is no Superman, and he manages to get abused and abuse himself with the best of them.

Huston’s words are concise and brutal. He doesn’t waste time with unnecessary navel-gazing and keeps the narrative spurting along with unflinching description and a total absence of quotation marks (he uses the em dash to introduce dialogue, and it works, once you get used to it). The only knock against it is that Huston seems to go a little soft (please don’t hit me) at the end, but this is a small nit to pick considering the whirlwind berserker rush that the majority of the book incites. With more books – and authors – like this, we might all be able to say “noir vampire detective story” with a straight face in the near future. –Ryun Patterson

Buy it at Amazon.