Charlie Huston, No Dominion [Library of Babel]

The last booklog post was about an author who made a name writing urban fantasy, who is trying to write in a different subgenre, so it seems somewhat appropriate to have this post be about an urban fantasy by an author who made a name writing something else. OK, Charlie Huston might object to having No Dominion called "urban fantasy," as that carries some connotation of woo, but the science babble underlying his explanation of vampires is so dopey, it might as well be magic.

Huston made a splash with his dark and bloody noir series of crime novels featuring Henry Thompson (Caught Stealing, Six Bad Things and the new-ish A Dangerous Man). He came to my attention when he wrote his first vampire noir, Already Dead, which follows the adventures of Joe Pitt, a man in New York infected with a Vyrus that gives him all the symptoms of vampirism.

In Pitt's New York, vampires are not exactly common, but they're very well-organized. Most of the city is divided up among various Clans (the Hood, the Coalition, the Society), who tightly control activity in their own territories. Vampires who get out of line are pushed out in the sun to die, which is pretty horrible when you know that you can otherwise live almost indefinitely.

Joe Pitt is a former enforcer for one of the Clans (the Society, run by the deceptively hippie-ish Terry Bird) who has decided to go it alone. He keeps himself in money and blood (just barely) by working as a sort of freelance PI/ general fixer in the vampire community, taking ocasional jobs for the Clans when they need to find something or someone quietly. In this volume, Pitt discovers that there's a new drug that actually works on vampires (the magic Vyrus neutralizes most conventional intoxicants), and his old friend Terry sends him out to find the source of the drug. This, of course, is only the first step in a plot that takes Joe from one end of Manhattan to the other, meeting all sorts of unsavory characters, most of whom end up wanting him dead.

As you might expect from Huston's background as a noir writer, this is a violent and bloody book, though not as violent and bloody as the Henry Thompson novels. It's got a great pulp feel to it, though, and Huston has the snappy dialogue and PI bravado down, as in the scene where Pitt is sent on a mission by Harlem boss vampire DJ Grave Digga, and tries to recover his prize leather jacket:

--Suppose I could get my jacket back?

Digga creases his forehead.

--Doan ask me, it his jacket now.

I look at Timberlands.

He looks at me.

--Fuck off, it my jacket now.

--Uh-huh.

I look at Digga.

--How 'bout my gun and my knife?

Digga looks at me, looks up the hill, looks at Timberlands.

--Man should not go unstrapped.

[...] He takes the .32 out of my jacket's pocket. He weighs it in his hand.

--Gat a piece of shit anyway.

He hands it to me. I take it from him and stick the barrel in his mouth.

--Suppose I could have my jacket back?

Really, the only complaint I have about this book is the "m-dash for dialogue" thing, which normally drives me nuts. In this case, though, the voice and plot are more than compelling enough for me to ignore this quirk of typography.

These aren't for the faint of heart, but if you like noir or noir-ish fantasy, these are excellent books. I'd recommend reading Already Dead first, but the books stand alone fairly well, despite the fact that there's evidently going to be some overarching plot. I look forward to whatever comes next.