My Dead Body

I'm re-reading this book, and have decided this series--and particularly this book--has a carol-metaphor-story.

Once, in the early witching hours of the morning when absolutely nothing good happens, I got called out of bed to respond to a roll-over car accident out by Highway N. My partner and I jumped in the ambulance and raced to the scene, still half-asleep, ambulance lights and siren flaring in the darkness. The car had rolled off the road, but the scene was obvious from a mile away, lit up by white-hot spotlights and the strobes of police cars. Officers doing a search had found a teen thrown from the car, sprawled in the matted corn, limbs askew, barely conscious. He was in a halo of light, rimmed with an expanse of corn, enough to show more get lost in. As I knelt, crushing stalks under my knees, I took his head in my hands to hold his spine straight until my partner could apply a collar. He might have moaned as we worked. For his mother, for a cigarette, for a drink--who could tell? I could smell the sweetness of alcohol on his breath as I watched his breathing. When we shifted and wrapped his body, buckling him to the hard plastic longboard, I heard the deep thuk thuck of the helicopter blades as they slowed.

The Charlie Pitt series is a lot like that scene. Violence, stupidity and noble intentions; life and struggle; purpose and accidents; tension and inevitablity; darkness lit by flashes of white and red lights; poetry and philosophy in short choppy bites. Impressive and uncomfortable. The high of adrenalin coupled with tragedy.

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The finale in the Joe Pitt series satisfactorily brings it all together and leaves a warm afterglow. Truly, I wasn't sure it would. The beginning was rocky; Joe is apparently taping a chronicle of events, and of all things, laughing as he narrates. What?! Joe doesn't laugh. Maybe, at most, a dry chuckle or a bitter half-curve applied to the lip. It felt awkward. However, I stayed with it and it took off like one of Joe's matches flaring in the dark. Chubby comes to call and request a favor, dangling the chance for Joe to break even, and setting it with a sharp hook. Joe is dragged in despite himself, and soon finds himself traversing Manhattan looking for Chubby's missing daughter and her Vampyre lover.

Once again, the underbelly of New York comes alive, particularly the beginning when we follow Joe through his new turf, and the following subway sequences. I can just about feel the grime and hear the rumble of the train from Joe's shack. Every time Joe meets that pasty white Enclave skittering through the shadows, I shiver.

The overall action sequence felt a little re-hashed, but it worked well. It's the finale, and appropriate both in term of the plot and the arc of Joe's life, and frankly, it's satisfying to revisit the gang. Digga, Percy, Amanda, Sela, Phil, Lydia, Terry and Hurley, Predo, the Count. They all get a chance to wax philosophical, and what do you know--they all have some surprising insights that are true to character. Digga is my clear favorite, but Hurley's period accent and mindset runs a close second. The relationships have developed enough over the course of the series that it's not a replay--more of a jazz riff, escalating to a dramatic conclusion. Huston is not afraid to play hardball with his characters; like Hamlet, the stage is littered with bodies by the end.

And damn if the writing doesn't keep grabbing me:

"I'd say I was thinking about Evie, but that would be redundant. She's my white noise. Always there, crackling static in my brain. Inescapable. Mostly you tune it out. The second you focus on it, it drowns out everything else."

"Not that she's done me wrong. Just that she radiates danger with a half-life of forever."

"If it go that far. Which I ain't sure about as yet. Possibility people could all have a sudden attack of gettin' they's shit together. Never know."


Cross posted at: http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2013/07/02/my-dead-body-by-charlie-huston-vampyre... show less

If you're looking for another Twilight, this isn't it. If we call Meyer's books Vampire YA, full of angst and...well...more angst, and we call Harris' Sookie Stackhouse books Vampire Lite, full of romance, sex and some sanitized violence, then Huston's books are Vampire Grit...Philip Marlowe encounters the dark side and then some. There's very little sex, not much more romance, but people get hurt in this quintet of books. Yet, they aren't really part of the horror genre like Dracula and its progeny; these read exactly like hard-boiled crime novels.

I really liked them for this. In a world where (to use Huston's term) sanguivores exist, it isn't all going to be tall, dark, erotic and handsome. If you think of the Irish gang wars in New show more York in the 19th century, or the Mob battles during Prohibition, you'll have a good idea of the tone of these books.

This picks up the second half of the story begun in Every Last Drop with Joe Pitt, ever more beaten and battered, dealing with the chaos he started in that volume. Huston pulls this all together very nicely, satisfactorily resolving not only the immediate events, but the larger story line, as well.

Huston's novels are generally rather raw and these are no exception. If you want a very different perspective on how "vampires among us" would play out, I recommend this series. show less

I still can't get enough of Huston's sparse writing. It feels lean and clean even when the topic is oily and gritty. I can't be certain this is the last Joe Pitt book. Huston leaves the door open for at least one more semi-apocalyptic novel. But I suppose I do doubt it because, to tell that story, it would not be as tightly personal as all the earlier stories were. Who knows. Maybe he would find a plot that still has us riding on Joe's shoulder.

I rate My Dead Body a bit lower than any of the others in the series. It felt like Huston was forcing the resolution of his many threads and also gratuitously cutting off Joe's body parts. I know Joe getting himself beat up is part of who he is but this story takes it too far. Sure he's a wiseass show more but would he really stick his head that far into the noose and encourage his physical destruction that much?

There are moments of greatness, just as in the other novels, but I felt more of a let-down. Maybe my expectations were high as some of the earlier stories are magnificent. But what happens to Predo, Terry, and Hurley here is packaged in too big a lump for me to swallow and still enjoy.

All in all, I haven't read anyone else who captures this noir tone in a supernatural thriller quite like Charlie Huston. I give a tip of the hat to a master at his craft! show less

This is the last book in the Joe Pitt series. The series was quite amazing at the start but for me it has been limping along. The last book, and this one too are sub par. This book is better than book 4, but only just.

The problem for me is that the books have become repetitive. Nothing new happens. Joe is a tough guy who is a loner and only operates under his own rules. The situation is the same, he can't survive on his own, so he has to kowtow to one faction or another. The other factions are led by the same people and Joe has the same snarling, nasty, often violent interactions with them. They try use him, he tries to use them.

Its like watching a bunch of drunken teenage males who are in a pissing contest to see who is biggest, show more baddest, and toughest. Or like watching someone banging their head against the wall, Eventually you are over the fascinating horror and just wonder when the light will dawn and the banger will try something different - only he never does. Then it becomes boring.

The premise is that vampires are real, and caused by a disease. They live secretly among us. They are very territorial and you must be one of their group to be a vampire and live on their turf. The vampire clans have a specific philosophy or ethos and you have to buy in to belong. Joe is a loner and can't fake allegiance very well. He is used by the gangs to solve problems and investigate issues. In doing so he makes enemies and so everyone is after Joe.

This book actually starts out and if I had to describe it, I would say it was tedious. Joe is living underground, in the sewers of NYC, and stalking a human. He is actually boring as he brings us up to date on what he has been doing since the last book ended.

Eventually the book picks up, and he is again asked to do a job for one of the vampire gangs. He is conned into it. It is to find and save a young woman who is pregnant with a vampire's child. The child may be the key to curing the vampires. The different clans are at war, and Joe is wanted by all of the participants.

The usual Pitt book ensues. Lots of violence, action, bad attitude and snark, twists, double crosses and so on. Its like the verbal representation of a pin ball - he bounces here, is shot off to there, and ricochets off X and Y on the way. All very predictable, all practically scripted.

I say this is the last book because the ending is the start of something new, and anymore books in this series would no longer belong. Not sad to see the last of Joe. show less

I had this book for several years but, because I disliked book 4 so much, I didn't plan to read this one. But then I decided I wanted to clear up my to-read list a bit, so ... I dug it out. It was actually not too bad. Not as preachy as the last couple ended up being and kinda wrapped up the series. Glad I finished it. Glad I finished the series. Don't read this book if you haven't read the rest in the series, though, it won't really mean very much - the point of this book is just to close out all the other story characters that lingered from the previous books.

Overall, I guess I enjoyed it. There is some violence, moderate swearing, no sex.

Another book in Huston's series about the down on his luck vampire, Joe Pitt. Caught in the middle of a vampire civil war involving a missing girl who may be carrying an infant who may be the future destiny of vampires everywhere, Pitt struggles to survive. And gets increasingly battered along the way. An enjoyable story for those who like this sort of thing, it is almost entirely unmemorable a year or so after reading.

I noted as I went on that each book seemed to drop a star. This one barely got 2 stars. It would have been 1 1/2 if they gave that option because my reaction was "So do I care? " and the answer was no.

I can easily list what I didn't like about such as dialogue that went on and on and on until I wanted to say "OH SHUT UP AND GET TO THE POINT." Lots of emotional masturbation but not much forward motion in the plot.

Joe's series simply did not wear well which is sad because I wanted to like it.