Charlie Huston’s alternate Manhattan – divided and ruled by vampire clans who as of now are at an uneasy détente – is a harsh, dark wind sweeping away the unnecessary melodrama of the vampire romances infesting the horror shelves, advocating a splattery, spare, noir new wave.
This may be the third of a series, but HALF THE BLOOD OF BROOKLYN is no throwaway sequel. Huston obviously hates his characters’ guts, because he put them through every sort of wringer – but an actual, real wringer – and lives are changed irrevocably once again.
Joe Pitt – Huston’s vampire detective from ALREADY DEAD and NO DOMINION – has returned, and there’s trouble brewing in Brooklyn. Various bridge-and-tunnel bloodsuckers are making for Manhattan, and the island’s big vampire clans want to know why. Throw a murder by a possible vampire hunter and the fact that Joe’s human girlfriend is dying of AIDS into the mix, and Pitt’s got problems on his hands.
He’s sent over to Brooklyn for talks with another clan, a clan of Coney Island freaks whose open-to-the-public shows are amazingly gruesome, and once again ends up face to face with lots of pain – both for him and his enemies – and much more violence than he bargained for. He also has to face the fact that his girlfriend’s dying, and he has the ability to save her, if she can survive conversion into a vampire.
Both in scope and size, HALF THE BLOOD OF BROOKLYN will take no more than a couple of days to read. These first few Joe Pitt novels are reminiscent of the early Robert E. Parker’s early Spenser books: The tough-talking protagonists evolve with the storyline, and small mysteries eventually form a bigger metastory, offering more than narrative as food for thought. There are obviously differences, sure. I mean, nobody in THE GODWULF MANUSCRIPT has a hole chewed in his stomach and eats his own intestines, as far as I remember.
But with that comparison come an obvious caveat: Annual Joe Pitt installments have to keep evolving or risk falling into the bland old-guy mediocrity that the Spenser books have seen for at least a decade. Maybe it was the intestines, but I think Huston’s got the balls to keep it real as long as he wants. –Ryun Patterson
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• ALREADY DEAD by Charlie Huston
• NO DOMINION by Charlie Huston
Related posts:
- Already Dead
- No Dominion
- The Blood Rider
- LIT TRIP >> Half Price Books: Austin, TX
- BOOK WHORE >> 9.27.05
