Joe Pitt's world is different than yours and mine... unless you're a vampyre from one of the undead territories in Manhattan, too. You can't really tell what he is to look at him, unless you're watching when he crawls or jumps up a wall or if you just happen to catch the buff 45-year old drinking a pint... of blood.

His powers are more than muscular. He's got a sense of smell that'd make a bloodhound seem as useful as a wooden puppet. This ability is an indispensable tool in his arsenal, enabling him to tell the "shamblers," (aka, brain eaters or zombies) from the human traffic in the city.

The worst thing about these lower class denizens is that they tend to stink and cover it with cheap to expensive perfume, and Joe can tell which. But Joe's nose also gets past the camo-fragrance to the rank decay of the dying flesh. Frangipani doesn't stand a chance. In fact, Joe's olfactory system is wired into his brain in such a way that he's able to catalogue smells like a human's immune system never forgets a virus.

He can even differentiate smells long after the leavers of them have gone. He can "read" a room beyond anything Sherlock Holmes ever imagined, which is a decided advantage in his investigations for his demanding and dangerous clients at The Coalition and The Society, vampyre clans that operate like Mafia and take very different approaches to controlling their well marked out turfs on the island.

Speaking of viruses, Joe laces his first person narrative with details of undead physiology that makes it seem as real as Dr. Salk and his vaccine. He explains why and how the vampyre (his spelling) virus consumes a competing molecular invader that might find its way into its host. Meaning that it can clear up just about any disease a person might have or contract, keeping its feeding ground all to itself. Even cancer doesn't stand a chance. And, all it asks for is a steady supply of fresh blood.

Feeding on blood is, of course, unavoidable. But in Joe's vampyric universe, you don't go sinking your bicuspid into the first neck that makes itself available. That would arouse the humans who populate the city to what's in their midst. Joe and his kind would be wiped out. Besides, there are more civilized ways to satisfy the need.

Joe would love nothing more than to cure his girlfriend Evie's HIV by transmitting his curative virus, but he rather humanely recognizes that the cost is too great. Instead, he and his 22-year old, curly red-haired bartender practice sex like a pair of parishioners and enjoy a relationship with enough love and romance to dispell doubts about what they mean to each other.

In order to remain "rogue" in the eyes of the ruling powers, that is, an independent operator, he does favors for both The Coalition and The Society whose territorial dividing line is 14th street. But that doesn't mean he doesn't take his assignments seriously. The latest one comes from the obscure Dexter Predo, the head of The Coalition's secret police and a first class asshole. First Dexter warns Joe that a "carrier" of a flesh-eating bacteria is running loose and Joe might well be its intended target. Later, he demands that Joe meet with rich Marilee Ann Horde whose daughter Amanda has gone missing. Could this delinquent be the dodgy shambler he just slashed up in an abandoned building encounter? Are the two cases related? And how is he going to find the carrier and/or Amanda with another, highly deranged vampyre cult stalking him with the intent to destroy? His dance card seems to be filled with capable enemies.

Actually, zombies, are easier to kill. At one stage, Joe tells us how. "My advice is to use a gun and a lot of bullets, just like if you were trying to kill your wife or husband."

This adventure with a figure who might be the most sympathetic blood drinker in the literature may be the funniest read you'll ever give yourself... or the most disgusting. Either way, it's fascinating to see how author Charlie Huston makes the elements of gore and amusement feed on themselves as he pulls off a range of natural emotions in a world if subhuman violence.

We relate to our hero's awareness and pains like we never could for Bram Stoker's seminal vampire progenitor, "Dracula." Huston's originality synthesizes Anne Rice and Raymond Chandler with a dash of Hunter S. Thompson. It's hip, it's wry, it's on U.S. soil and about as convincing as the blood lust tradition can get--and all while demonstrating how adaptable creature stories can be.

As you fall into the humanistic grasp of a guy like Joe, and lap up the "science" behind it, just watch that you keep your brain stem protected at all times--if for no other reason than that we might just get a sequel. For something as assured and fun as this is, author Charlie Huston is sure to be around to exploit a few literary veins for a satisfyingly long time.