The Assembly Books in Order

The Assembly series takes McHugh’s love of urban fantasy and pushes it deep into vampire noir, with a focus on one undead investigator trying to hold a fragile peace together.

In this world, vampires and humans coexist under an uneasy truce enforced by the Assembly, a powerful organization that prefers problems to be handled quietly. Miles Watson is one of their Arbiters—judge, jury, and executioner when needed. He’s centuries old, dryly sarcastic, and accompanied almost everywhere by Church, a fiercely intelligent dog he once rescued as a puppy and trained to be his partner.

Those Who Dwell in Darkness opens with a botched attempt to create new vampires in secret. A criminal network in London promises wealthy humans they can skip the waiting list and turn without Assembly approval. When the process goes wrong, the Boss wants every trace of the scheme erased. One enforcer refuses, the bodies start to pile up, and Miles is sent to untangle the mess. The case leads from London’s supernatural underworld to the remote forests of the Pacific Northwest and reveals a wider conspiracy that threatens both humans and vampires.

In A Deliberate Act of Violence, Miles faces a more personal nightmare: a series of brutal murders that seem to implicate a newly turned vampire who also happens to be the son of a powerful businessman with Assembly backing. Stopping the killings means navigating internal politics, shady business interests, and the very real possibility that the people above him would rather bury the truth than see justice done.

The Pilgrims of the Damned raises the stakes again. After a previous case leaves him shaken, Miles is pushed into one more job—travelling to a dangerous, desolate stretch of Maine where rival factions and feral creatures jostle for control. A human wielding chaotic magic is on a killing spree, and the only person who might stop them is a newly minted witch who needs a babysitter with teeth. The result is a road‑trip investigation that feels part horror, part detective story, and part war novel.

Across the series, the tone is darker and more overtly horror‑flavored than in the Hellequin books, but the same core themes show up: found family, stubborn decency, and people trying to do the right thing with very sharp tools. Miles is ruthless when he has to be, but he’s also loyal, tired, and more than a little done with people who treat others as expendable.

You can read The Assembly on its own, but readers familiar with McHugh’s other work will spot echoes of his worldbuilding style—complicated power structures, back‑room deals, and a sense that the monsters you can negotiate with may be less frightening than the ones wearing suits.