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Already
Dead
can be smelled from a mile away. It is the odor of brown paper
bags and shame: The smell of a "guilty pleasure." Charlie
Huston's novel is the type of thing read in one's closed bedroom
with a flashlight. Novels about vampire detectives solving
zombie-centric murder mysteries tend to have that effect.
Already
Dead is the story of Joe Pitt: the aforementioned New
York City vampire sleuth. Like most other hard-nosed gumshoes,
Joe's life is a series of cases, beatings, beautiful dames,
and steering clear of the ire of various in-power clans. Of
course, being a vampire, the cases also involve less run-of
the mill work, such as tracking down and disposing of zombies
(affectionately referred to as "shamblers") in order to keep
the whole undead underworld under wraps. Simple cases become
much larger as the thread is followed, eventually leading
to missing girls, internet porn, pharmaceutical barons, and
the mystical undead.
The case
at hand begins as a simple, covert elimination of some local
walking dead. Things rapidly become messy as Pitt botches
the job, leaving a bloody crime scene and living witnesses.
His employers, to put it mildly, are nonplussed. Pitt works
hard to set things right, but a string of obstacles, missing
girls, and threats pile up, as does the body count. As to
be expected, the plot thickens as Joe follows the bodies,
beatings, blood trails, and drunken millionaire wives to the
heart of all of this trouble.
Huston
clearly grew up reading pulp novels, sci-fi and comic books.
Already Dead is exactly the type of high octane, smash-bang
plot one would expect from such an issue-to-issue medium.
Joe Pitt exists in a world of cool gents with slicked-back
hair, beautiful bartenders, informants, and subway-hopping
grit readers would expect from a novel about a vampire detective.
Not sure if the plot point's been hammered home enough—the
main character is a vampire who solves mysteries.
Thankfully,
that point is hammered home to Huston, as well. He is aware
that a story like this is ridiculous, and he treats it with
levity and humor but avoids parody and cartoonishness. Yes,
Already Dead is exciting. It's a page-turner which
is easy to read, and he keeps the action coming. Like Buffy
the Vampire Slayer before it, though, Huston injects Already
Dead with enough tongue-in-cheek self-awareness that no
one would be embarrassed for it. He's familiar with the genres
he's smashing together, and this serves to be one of the novel's
stronger points.
Like
great vampire novels such as I Am Legend, Huston's
book takes the mythos of the undead and revitalizes it to
be modern. In his world, vampires are the product of a virus
in the blood, which operates as a parasite, cleaning out and
healing its host-body. This leads to the vampire's youth,
rapid healing, etc., and it forces the demand for new, un-infected
blood.
Huston
also sketches out what would be required for a vampire society
to exist in the modern world. They simply couldn't kill for
blood, and he crunches the numbers: X number of vampires needing
Y pints of blood is going to lead to Z dead bodies, and that
is going to attract attention. Huston weaves the workings
of the vampire world into the "normality" of the life of a
private eye in modern-day New York, creating something much
more believable (if the kayfabe of vampire novels doesn't
overwhelm you). Whereas a normal private dick has to appease
the mob and the police, Pitt has to keep on the good side
of the Coalition (the "old blood," pun intended); the upcoming
hippie-led gay/lesbian-friendly revolutionary vampires to
the south; and the physically strong, unusual and ascetic
Enclave (who happen to think Joe may be their vampire messiah).
The attention to detail and willingness to modernize the vampire
legend keeps the genre fresh.
Like
virus-based vampires, Huston's zombies are the product of
less successful parasites which feed on brain tissue, rapidly
killing the host and leaving enough motor function for the
host-body to find and consume more brain tissue. Fans of genres
that employ these creatures are often more than content to
find new explanations and topics of discussion for their geeky
fascinations.
The notion
of zombies being "sick" humans is nothing new, but the method
by which it occurs is very often skirted. Again, Huston manages
to make something tired and cliché feel novel. Similarly,
Huston knows his pulpy noir mystery, and he sticks to the
script enough to make it familiar and comfortable, but he
manages to keep the genre fresh by making the plot revolve
around things which no Sam Spade novel ever touched on (and
having his protagonist drink blood, of course).
The book
is enjoyable. Huston isn't going to win any literary awards,
and he's an unapologetic genre author (his website is pulpnoir.com,
for instance), but he writes entertaining books that people
enjoy. How one couldn't be at least somewhat charmed
by such a tale is a mystery I'd like to see solved. (Editor's
note: this is the worst joke ever).
(June,
2007)
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