No Dominion: A Novel [Paperback]

Charlie Huston (Author)

Book Description

Release date: December 26, 2006

Joe Pitt’s life sucks. He hasn’t had a case or a job in God knows how long and his stashes are running on empty. What stashes? The only ones that count to a guy like Joe: blood and money. The money he uses to buy blood; the blood he drinks. Hey, buddy, it’s that or your neck–you want to choose? The only way to lay his hands on both is to take a gig with the local Vampyre Clan. See, something new is on the streets, a new high, a high so strong it can send a Vampyre spazzing through Joe’s local watering hole. Till Joe sends him through a plate-glass window, that is.

So it’s time for Joe to gut up and swallow that pride and follow the leads wherever they go. It won’t be long before he’s slapping stoolies, getting sapped, and being taken for a ride above 110th Street. Someone’s pulling Joe’s strings, and now he’s riding the A train, looking to find who it is. He’s gonna cut them when he finds them–the strings and the hands that hold them.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. 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. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

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. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Del Rey; First Edition edition (December 26, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345478258
• ISBN-13: 978-0345478252
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.6 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #80,641 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Charlie Huston is the author of the bestsellers The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death and The Shotgun Rule, as well as the Henry Thompson trilogy, the Joe Pitt casebooks, and several titles for Marvel Comics. He lives with his family in Los Angeles.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Vampyre Noir -- subtle maneuvers May 13, 2007

By Gayle Surrette VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

In No Dominion, Joe Pitt has settled down a bit since Already Dead. The jobs have been few and far between but he's been doing okay -- except his stash is down to 3 pints, his girlfriend's HIV is getting worse, and she's wants to know what Joe does for a living. But that's just background as Joe's face is getting pushed through safety glass by a vamp hyped up on drugs. This is no small thing since the vyrus doesn't let vampyres get more than a light and fleeting buzz from drugs. So what's the drug that can get a vamp high? Who's making it? And where the heck are all these new vamps coming from?

No Dominion is noir squared. Joe Pitt is a vampire Sam Spade. Joe's a cynic but he can't help trying to do the right thing even when it means it might cost him everything he is. Vampyres are all about politics and territory. To learn what the new drug is and who is making it, Joe must travel out of his territory, and to do that he has to have the help of Terry, who wants to control him, and Daniel, who believes Joe should take his place when he dies. Joe is a holdout not beholden to any clan but picking up jobs and living free by Terry's whim in Terry's territory.

Pitt might not be a mover and a shaker in vampyre politics but he knows when he's being used and, even knowing, he allows it to get the job done. But in the end it just might cost him more than he's willing to pay. Huston continues to develop the character and the story unfolds allowing us to see how it works -- there are no winners here. There are those who are used and those who don't realize they are being used and those who make a choice for a better chance for others.

While you could probably pick this book up without having read Already Dead; there's a lot of backstory given in the first chapters to help out with the set up. However, the first book is excellent, so give yourself a treat.

There's no happy ending, just a visit to a place that's got to be worse than wherever you are now and that's got to make this world and this reality look better just by comparison -- and a nifty mystery to boot.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Got Blood? December 30, 2006

By Gary Griffiths TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Joe Pitt is the classic pulp fiction tough guy. Part private investigator, part leg breaker, all renegade. Joe Pitt is also a "vampyre".

Welcome to Charlie Huston's contemporary New York, a city where by night the undead walk among us, holed up in darkened Manhattan apartments by day. But But Houston's Dracula is about as similar to Bram Stoker and Transylvanian and bats as blood is similar to Kool Aid. Huston's blood-lusting wraiths of Manhattan are victims of an AIDS-like "Vyrus", aligned in cults operating in uneven detente in a twisted JR Tolkien nightmare society. Pitt, while living in the Greenwich Village turf of the politically correct and activist "Society" clan, remains independent, a rogue agent allowed to exist on the fringes of vampire-dom thanks to his rep for ridding the neighborhood of undesirables.

So following last year's "Already Dead", the tight-lipped Pitt returns, short of cash and more than a few "pints" low. It seems there is a new vampyre high loose on the streets of New York, wrecking some havoc within the clans. Pitt, desperate for work and in need of a new stash of hemo for the fridge, takes a contract from the Society clan's boss to track down the source of the strange and dangerous new drug. This leads Pitt to "the Count", a spoiled rich kid from Columbia playing vampire, complete with a trio of usually stoned vamp brides. Pitt's search for the stuff takes him north to Harlem and "the Hood" clan, home of the feared DJ Grave Digga and his Ecco Rhin-clad homeboys. With this backdrop, Huston spins a vicious - if somewhat convoluted tale - of inter-clan politics, setups, treachery and, true to the author's own rep, nonstop action. While "No Dominion" is not a sequel per se, it would be best to read "Already Dead" first, filling in some of the holes that Huston chooses not to repeat (at the risk of slowing down this episode).

Like his offbeat subject matter and anti-hero, Charlie Huston's lean prose, uncluttered by ordinary convention like chapters and quotation marks, follows no rules and, at least in terms of style, has no equal. Hip, irreverent, brutal, sometimes even thought provoking, Huston is not for everyone. But "No Dominion" is further proof that Huston, while unorthodox, is in a class of his own, and a very short list of today's top crime writers.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A definite vampire read! January 17, 2007

By Catfish Kozmo VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I've read the Henry Thompson series by Charlie Huston as well as Already Dead. They're all really solid novels. What makes them stand out is the narrative tone that the author takes with his leads. You really get a feel for what is going on inside of their head which puts you into the action.

That being said, I wouldn't bother reading this novel without having read Already Dead. It's a vampire novel but a toned down, gritty New York almost crime noir novel. And its good. I'd say that this novel had a few rough spots but overall, you're not going to be able to put it down. It's the continuing saga of Joe Pitt. It's got a fairly well fleshed out Vampire world in New York which is fun. I'd imagine that the author is going to continue to flesh it out in future novels which I will definitely have to read.