Why you should be reading Joe Pitt

I blogged a while back about starting the Joe Pitt series of vampire books by Charlie Huston, but I thought I'd do a short update because a) I'm nearly finished the series now and b) I'm slightly stuff for ideas to write about, as I have had a cold-muzzied head all week that seems to be making me a bit stupid.

Joe Pitt has been described - possibly by me, I forget - as a vampire Philip Marlowe, and the books are a hard-boiled look at a vampire infected New York, a city divided up into clans who all have very different views on whether the wider population should know about their 'vyrus'* - but the one thing they all agree on is that Joe Pitt, rogue vampire, loyal to no clan, is a pain in the ass. The books chart his attempts to get by when pretty much everyone wants to kill him, rope him into schemes that'll get him killed, or... no, that's pretty much all anyone wants with Joe. So, 4 books into the series, how does it rate?

While I really enjoyed the first one (Already Dead), I didn't love the story - so it's taken me a while to come back to them, which was a mistake. The first book, far from being as standalone as it appears, is part of a compelling arc (I imagine the books can be read separately, but they work far better as a series) in which an increasingly desperate Joe finds his options starting to narrow. They are violent, and it takes a while to get used to the stripped back style - they are so pitch black noir they can feel almost parodic, but stick with them and once you have the rhythm of the writing, it's enormously rewarding. Joe isn't likeable, exactly, but he's a compelling anti-hero with just enough heart that it's always him you're rooting for. So if you haven't already, give them a try.

*The one thing that jars is this spelling - it feels like people putting apostophes into names to make them sound sci-fi, and isn't at all in keeping with the no-nonsense style of the book.