In case you hadn’t noticed, vampires are very much the In Thing at the moment, pretty comfortably dominating the worlds of literature, television and movies. Yes, indeed – with a twinkle in the eye and a disturbingly pointy smile, the debonair bloodsuckers are doing very nicely, thank you.

With one exception: Joe Pitt. Joe’s not doing so well, as it happens.

As the concluding volume of this highly acclaimed series opens, Joe has spent a year splashing around in the city’s sewer system, protecting the perimeters of the ground on which his love, Evie, now lives.

Above ground, Manhattan’s Vampyre clans have at last abandoned any claims on civility and have finally sprung fully for each others’ throats. But as Vampyre civil war rages, Joe is tracked down by an old acquaintance and pulled back to the surface. At last, the many questions that have driven him will be put to rest – and the many friends and foes who have defined his world will either be put in the ground or will claw their way to survival.

The carefully maintained peace is forgotten. When the stakes are this high, there can be no neutrality – only winners and losers. But when the blood stops flowing, what side will Joe Pitt be on?

You can start to discover the answer to that question by reading our extract from My Dead Body (with a warning for the feint of heart that Charlie Huston‘s vampires are pretty free with the strong language).

And for those of you who are new to the critically acclaimed Joe Pitt saga, you might want to begin at the beginning and see for yourself why Stephen King described Charlie Huston as ‘One of the most remarkable prose stylists to emerge from the noir tradition in this century’ . . .