Charlie Huston Books In Order

Publication Order of Hank Thompson Books

Publication Order of Joe Pitt Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Moon Knight (2006) (Collected Editions) Books

Publication Order of Graphic Novels

Publication Order of Anthologies

Charlie Huston is an American author best known for the writing of horror, crime fiction, and superhero comic books. The author likes to refer to himself as a pulp fiction rather than noir writer. He is best known for the Joe Pitt Casebooks, the Hank Thompson trilogy, several marvel comics and a series of popular single standing novels. He cites Raymond Chandler and J.R.R. Tolkien as some of the authors that have had the biggest influence on his writing style and his career in general. Huston first introduced himself to crime fiction and thriller readers in 2004, with the publishing of his novel, Caught Stealing. Huston was born in Oakland, California but moved to New York in 1995 to pursue his acting ambitions. His wife, then a love interest lived in New York, and hence his move served to kill two birds with one stone. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Virginia Louise Smith, a Broadway Actress. He was nominated for the Edgar Award in 2006 for Caught Stealing.

Most of the Hank character and storylines are based on Charlie Huston’s own biography, including the motivations and struggles to find a foothold in a new and strange city. Despite the character having a seemingly quiet existence, Charlie shows his skill in the creating of one of the most intoxicating first person voices in Henry Hank Thompson. Hank has a voice that has a keen edge of dry humor interspersed with an urban neurotic charm that readers just cannot get enough of, despite all the horrors spread out through the novels of the series. He carefully develops a Hustonian theme in the series, which asks, how do honest people react when they become victims of violence or circumstance forces them to cross ethically questionable lines they would otherwise not cross? Huston’s Hank series is a success on two levels. He successfully gives the reader just enough to keep them engrossed through broad strokes of characterization coupled with a substantive backstory. This technique is prevalent in the Hank Thompson series as well as in other works by Huston. He also makes engaging descriptions of almost everything the characters do in a straightforward plot that he delivers at breakneck tempo.

While Caught Stealing was Charlie Huston’s breakthrough novel, it was not by any means his first. Long before he had the novel published by Random House, he had written a novel featuring a vampire private investigator known as Joe Pitt. The fast paced, edgy novel had never interested any publisher until the publishing of Caught Stealing, when publishers fell over themselves to publish anything he had. The theme in the novel is still the same; that of a man living on the fringes of society and trying to come to terms with the consequences of violence. Huston employs the classical cultural and hierarchical foundations that are to be expected in any vampire novel in his premier vampire series. However, he goes even further by basing his walking dead character on science, by asserting that vampirism results from a virus. Huston also gives vivid descriptions of the agony of a vampire who does not have a blood meal for long, in scenes that mirror Hank Thompson’s bloody confrontations and emotional pain, when he learns that his friends are dead.

While the writing of so many titles would have been enough to exhaust any other writer, Charlie Huston is not one of them. He became a scriptwriter for a Marvel Comic that goes by the name of Moon Knight. Nonetheless, his taking up of the role makes sense given that the lead character is similar to his other dark and socially isolated protagonists such as Hank and Pitt. Moon Night is the son of a Rabbi who is hopeless spiraling down a pit of addiction, madness, and depression after experiencing unspeakable violence in Egypt. Huston writes a gritty, violent urban narrative that will have any thriller fan on the edge of their seats in anticipation of when or if the protagonist will attain the ultimate redemption from their demons.

Caught Stealing is Charlie Huston’s first novel that made his name in the crime fiction genre. Hank Thompson, who was once a baseball prodigy, has just moved to Lower East Side Manhattan to make a living. He has to contend with high rents, old tenements, and dirty drunks while working as a bartender. All is good when his neighbor Russ leaves him a cat Bud to take care of since he has to leave the city in a hurry. However, things start to become weird, when two Russians drag him from behind his bartending counter and proceed to beat him to a pulp. He now knows that there are people that want something from him though he just cannot figure out what, nor can he make them believe that whatever it is, he does not have it. In a little under 24 hours, he is playing hide and seek with the police, swinging his long forgotten aluminum bat at a guy’s cranium, running over rooftops, counting a wad of cash on some warehouse floor, and riding the subway with a dead body. Getting a cat from a friendly neighbor could turn out to be one of the most dangerous things that Hank ever did.

Six Bad Things is the second novel of the Hank Thompson series that is also highly popular among Charlie Huston fans. Now living off the grid in Mexico after making away with a lot of cash and secrets he stole for the Russian mafia, Hank Thompson finds himself playing a dangerous game of Russian roulette. Soon a backpacker glides into a town and starts asking a lot of questions which Hank plays down, pretending innocence. He knows the Russians may be onto him when out of nowhere the backpacker mentions his family and the money. He is now in a frantic race to get back to the States to protect his ailing parents from the mob. As is usual, the way north is twice as dangerous as going south. On the way, he has to face psychotic surf bums, drug dealers, extortionists, vigilantes, Mafiosi, Border Patrol, and Federales that are all determined to make his life hard. Charlie Huston spins an edgy story that takes the reader from the seedy strip clubs of Las Vegas to the silvery beaches of Yucatan, opening up a world of corruption and crime, where the characters live life on the edge.