No Dominion

Starred review from October 23, 2006
Huston's stylish sophomore outing for hard-boiled vampire detective Joe Pitt maintains the high quality of its predecessor, Already Dead
(2005). When a fellow bloodsucker who seems revved up on drugs picks a bar fight with Pitt, the detective discovers that a new drug has hit the street, one strong enough to cut through the vampire virus and make its users do unpredictable things, things that could bring unwelcome exposure to New York's vampire community. Word has it that the drug, "anathema," comes from suppliers in Harlem. The leader of the Society Clan of vampires hires Pitt to investigate uptown, but the all-black vampire clan called the Hood, run by one DJ Grave Digga, has other plans in mind for the rogue detective. Meanwhile, Pitt's HIV-positive girlfriend Evie, who's struggling with a new round of medication, is beginning to lose patience with Pitt's secrecy and disappearances. Indeed, the doomed love story at the heart of Huston's action-filled epic is what truly makes this a noir novel, and the undead microcosm of society he creates is both surprisingly relevant and entertaining.

October 1, 2006
The second Joe Pitt casebook finds Greenwich Village's favorite undead shamus caught in a nasty power struggle between competing vampire clans. Down to his last few bags of blood and behind on rent, Joe asks his old boss at the Society for work. The dirty job: finding the source of a powerful drug that's freaking out the newly infected. Unfortunately, that entails crossing the mid-Manhattan turf of the feared Coalition into the equally fearsome territory of Harlem's the Hood. Worse, Joe might be some powerful player's idea of a sacrificial pawn. One thing about vampires: they have plenty of time on their bloodstained hands to engage in complex, violent feuds. And one thing about vampire novels: they're usually bursting with metaphorical content. Here, Huston goes beyond the usual HIV comparisons to essay an extremist-fueled standoff that smartly echoes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the occupied territories. So, in addition to his usual sharp writing and entertaining characters (like an ironic vampire stud who parties the nights away in a Count Chocula T-shirt), he delivers a timely tale as well.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)