Every Last Drop: A Novel (Paperback)

by Charlie Huston (Author)
Key Phrases: Joe Pitt, Gum Snapper, One Sixty (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In this fascinatingly flawed fourth episode in the bloody horror-noir chronicles of New York vampire PI Joe Pitt (after 2007's Half the Blood Of Brooklyn), relations between the city's vampire clans are unraveling. The Cure is researching antidotes to the ravenous vampire-creating Vyrus, while the better-nourished Coalition seeks the Cure's downfall and the Society plays both sides. Dodging death threats and brokering shaky deals, Pitt shuttles among all three until he learns the Coalition's secret, a revelation so volatile that it may lead to all-out war. Huston supplies terse dialogue and convincing gore in expertly pitched prose, but the beautifully cinematic nastiness doesn't quite mask a key difficulty: Pitt's enemies set their hate aside too easily at his appearance, and their rational behavior is at odds with the emotional intensity (and sheer implausibility) of the climax. Newcomers may find the relationships difficult to parse, but those familiar with the series should be enthralled. (Sept.)
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From Booklist
In his fourth outing, rakish New York vampire Joe Pitt leaves the series’ “casebooks” nomenclature in the dust. This toothsome tale is no variation on the P.I. genre; instead, Huston imaginatively, logically explores the limits of the world he’s created for Pitt to haunt. If a virus that forced its hosts to seek blood for sustenance gave rise to competing secret clans that kept members fed in exchange for allegiance, wouldn’t a rising population of infected require development of a secure supply chain lest the drained bodies of victims started piling up on the Manhattan streets? Wouldn’t a threat to that supply destabilize the entire clan structure? And how would the established clans react to an upstart group promising to find a cure—thus stripping the old guard of its power? The answers to these questions might pierce even Pitt’s leather-tough heart as he takes readers on another darkly entertaining ride. Meanwhile, his nights of acting as unofficial clan go-between might be drawing to a close as the saber-rattling and brinksmanship escalates toward an all-out vampire war. We can hardly wait. --Frank Sennett

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Del Rey (September 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345495888
• ISBN-13: 978-0345495884
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.7 x 0.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #94,094 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• This is item 4 in The Joe Pitt Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Sanguinary Experience, October 21, 2008

By	Colin P. Lindsey (Manchester, NH) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Let me first say that I love the works of Charlie Huston. All of his books I have read until now have been five star, rock-n-roll, pull-no-punches, burn the barn down, extraordinary works. His Caught Stealing: A Novel trilogy is one of my favorite series, and his Joe Pitt vampire stories, of which this is the fourth, are howlingly good. Yet I had a reservation about this latest book which I'll explain in just a sec.

For those of you running across this series for the first time, do yourself a favor and get the first book in this series, Already Dead: A Novel, and start reading from the beginning. This is a darkly lyrical, powerfully told story of vampires in NYC, but unlike any vampire story you've read before. In Huston's world, vampires mostly lead lives of quiet desperation, drink whiskeys with a beer back, smoke cheap cigarettes, scrabble to pay the rent, and have to contend with a dangerous addiction to blood. Gotta have it, or you will die. However, you just can't start knocking people off or the boys in blue will catch wise and then it's genocide for vampires time. To protect their existence, the vampires have formed into clans who divide up Manhattan and police themselves ruthlessly and contend with other clans much like rival gangs. Huston's vampires are not romantic figures nor are they any more horrific than humans. They were once ordinary people struggling to get by and now they're the same people, with a need for blood, struggling to get by. The protagonist, Joe Pitt, is a big tough guy, living without clan membership, struggling to get by in the cracks of vampire and human society, working gigs as a bouncer or sometimes doing investigative jobs for some of the vampire clans. Huston's works are filled with many memorable characters just as real life is. There are transvestite, hippie, financial mafia, and gay and lesbian rights vampires in these noirish tales with more to do with crime fiction than horror.

For those of you who have read the first three books and are just checking the reviews of this one before purchasing, c'mon, who are you kidding? You're going to buy this book and read it regardless of what anyone says here because you already know this series is more addictive than blood. In this fourth installment, Joe is living in the hinterlands of the Bronx and not enjoying himself so much when he is captured and mutilated by an old enemy. "Rescued" by Predo, another old enemy and ordered back to Manhattan to spy on old friends. The story is engaging, violent, noirish and fun, just like the first three tales. The story rockets forward with Joe, ever the spoiler, precipitating what looks like will be an all out war between the Society, the Coalition, the Enclave, and The Cure (a brand new vampire clan). And there the story stops, which is my peeve with this book. We are left hanging with no resolution of the big conflict set up in the first 250 pages. Huston has always written brilliant tales that you leave with a satisfying conclusion to the crises created in the novel, even if there is always room to create another crisis for the next novel. He doesn't do that here, and this book feels like the first half of a book as opposed to a whole book in and of itself, and I was disappointed that the story just stopped with no resolution. I didn't like being set up for fireworks and then finding I will have to wait I don't know how many months for a resolution. So while this is a great story, it is only half the story. Therefore I am awarding four stars for the first time to a Huston novel. Normally I would counsel people to grab Huston's books as fast as they can get their hands on them, but this time my advice is to wait to read this one until the next one comes out and them read them together. Then again, I've never been one for delayed gratification, so if you don't mind half now, then half later, go ahead, this is still the darkly enjoyable Pitt series in fine form.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Joe Pitt Strkes Back, October 13, 2008

By	Patrick John Murray (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Just a warning, this will not be a spoiler-free review.

In Charlie Huston's fourth Joe Pitt novel, the tension rises as protagonist Joe Pitt returns from exile to exact revenge and, once again, play all sides against one another to get what he wants. From dealing with savage, african inspired savages, digging up old skeletons from his past across the river, to uncovering a secret so large, it could potentially destroy life altogether for those that carry the vyrus. Not to mention the long awaited rendezvous...

Being a reader since the first title (Already Dead) I couldn't wait for this book to drop, but was also slightly worried. After all, Huston's last three had been knock outs, could he capitalize on the universe he had built??

The answer, which comes as no surprise, is yes. Every Last Drop is just as gory, engrossing, and fast paced as the rest of the series has been. I literally couldn't put this book down until the very end. I anxiously wait the conclusion to this five-part masterpiece.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Joe Pitt--Still Lost in Horror Noir!, October 23, 2008

By	TMStyles (California) - See all my reviews

The four Joe Pitt novels are extraordinary examples at stylistic prose and horror noir at their best. The casual reader should be advised that "Every Last Drop" is not a good novel to begin one's sojourn in this excellent series. In fact, each subsequent novel has become murkier and more entangling than the previous entry. Huston's free style prose is sometimes hard to follow since it is dialogue in real time with no indications of "he said... she said". But stay with it---it is worth it!

Charlie Huston continues fleshing out his strangely intriguing world in which gang-like "clans" of vampires (humans who have been infected with the Vyrus) have divided Manhatten Island into territories and fiefdoms, each with its own governing structure, borders, spheres of influence, and purpose in existing. Huston effectively creates a world where vampires coexist with unknowing humans and where the sociological, psychological, and philosophical conflicts between individuals and between clans make for stunning parodies and commentaries on our lifestyles.

"Every Last Drop" continues the saga of rogue vampire PI Joe Pitt who, after the action in "Half The Blood In Brooklyn," has been ousted from his Manhatten stomping grounds and is now biding time in the wastelands of the Bronx where he has some heavy duty encounters with some old (and new) enemies that leave him damaged in more ways than one. Unlikely as it is, Dexter Predo "rescues" him and offers him a new spot in the Manhatten elite if he will infiltrate the new clan, Cure, to secure inside information on its search for a cure for the Vyrus.

Joe's reentry into the clannish world of Manhatten sets off a storm of events and conflicts that soon has him encountering, willingly or unwillingly, the Coalition, the Society, the Hood, and the Enclave. Joe once again plays all sides against each other, remains ever the loner, and seemingly starts a clan war to get at what he really wants...think back to the end of "Half The Blood In Brooklyn".

Peforming one of the tasks necessary to keep him alive (there are many in this convulted plot), Joe discovers a grimly explosive secret surrounding one of the most powerful clans--a secret so potentially explosive that the entire clan structure may go to war because of it. Joe's quest in this novel is agonizing to follow since it is accompanied by a great amount of violence, maiming, and depressing revelations. Yet, Joe is resolute through it all as he seeks an important reunion with someone from his past. I strongly recommend this effort for Huston fans but I urge first-timers to start with "Already Dead" and begin the fun trip toward "Every Last Drop."