“I can’t help wondering why these New World Order types should bother with an armed takeover. I mean, considering how nowadays people are slugging away at two and three jobs to make ends meet, how Mr. and Mrs. Average American are working until mid-May every year just to pay their federal income tax, and then on top of that they pay state and city income taxes, and then after those they’ve got to fork over sales taxes, property taxes, excise taxes, and surcharges, not to mention all the hidden expenses passed on in day-to-day prices jacked up by license fees and endless streams of regulations from OSHA and all the other two-bit government regulatory agencies.” — Jack in Conspiracies
Sometimes why we review something here at Green Man is as interesting as what we review. I honestly had not planned on reviewing this series, as it seemed on the surface to be just a slight variant on the Equalizer series that was done on network television a decade or so ago: it has an unlicensed “trouble shooter” who helps out relatively decent folks that have run into trouble with folks from the very bad side of existence. I’ve debated whether these novels, which aren’t really fantasy, fit within the Green Man area of interest, but their odd back story–which is straight out of a horror mythos–makes them fitting for Green Man. And if the author is telling the truth on his Web site, where the series will end up would cause Clive Barker, author of the dark horror epic Weave World, to take note of them!
Repairman Jack, as our hero is known, is the man to see when you need to make something happen in New York City that you prefer the authorities not be involved in, i.e., something that might not be terribly legal and quite likely will be dangerous. This work has forced Jack underground, outside the system. So, like the protagonist of Roger Zelazny’s “Home Is the Hangman” tale, he simply doesn’t exist on any databases in his real identity. Oh, he’s in the databases under a myriad of personas, but none are really him. His names are indeed legion. He’s middle aged, smart-assed, and possibly just a little too sane for his own good. And he likes seriously frelling over those who deserve it. Please note that this is a series, and while you could, if you were so inclined, jump in anywhere and start reading, you’d be well advised to go back to The Tomb, or at the very least the latest set of Repairman Jack novels, Legacies, Conspiracies, All The Rage, and Hosts, as both Jack and his situation evolve in fairly complex ways over the series. Any questions you have can sort of be answered at Repairman Jack’s Web site. A look at the Grand Unification page there will show you that Wilson has woven a pretty tangled web of players and circumstances.
The Tomb is available new in the usual shitty mass edition paperback; the hardcover could be rather difficult to find. The other four novels are in print from Tor/Forge, who provided our review copies. The Tomb was originally meant to be one-shot project with Jack clearly dying at the end. This novel is the clearest indication that the world that Jack lives in is one of unspeakable horror; he does battle with a nightmarish, apparently indestructible demon creature out of Hindu mythology — a whole shipload of them, in fact. The Rakoshi have been bred and imported to settle an ancient blood feud, and Jack finds himself squarely in the middle as his girlfriend and her daughter are in danger of being killed by these demons. It’s not giving much away to reveal that Jack survives, but once touched by the Rakoshi and where they come from, he can never turn back the clock. The evil the Rakoshi are will taint Jack’s very reality for the entire series.
Wilson meant for Jack to die off in The Tomb — he’s noted that he really didn’t see a future for him — but back he is in Legacies. OK, it took thirteen years before he returned, but it feels like only a few weeks in the world Jack lives in. This novel focuses on matters more scientific in nature, with no direct contact to Rakoshi, but Russian inventor Telsa does figure in it. Jack is hired by a woman whose past is threatening her life and the fate of the world: her abusive father has invented a technology that some will kill to have, and some will kill to destroy. She has inherited the ancestral house with its sought-after secret and suddenly finds herself pursued by powerful, mysterious forces that will stop at nothing to acquire both, or kill off everyone who might know about it. Jack solves the problem at hand in his usual way, but the ending is a little too pat — good build-up, lousy resolution.
Conspiracies is a much better novel than Legacies in that it drops Jack directly into a reality he deals well with — paranoids, conspiracy nuts, and really weird gurus. A missing wife is what starts us down the slippery slope to the Hell that is the Rakoshi, but Jack refuses at first to become involved–he doesn’t do missing wives. But the weird circumstances surrounding Melanie Ehler’s disappearance convince him to help out the woman’s distraught husband. Melanie is a leading voice in the conspiracy-theory movement, a true believer that crop circles, UFOs, and even the El Niño weather phenomenon are all part of a grand plot against humanity itself. She dubs this her Grand Unification Theory. (Everyone at this convention of the truly weird and scary has one — all completely different!) One week before announcing her Grand Unification Theory to the world, Melanie vanishes, and Jack is plunged deep into her not-very-sane world as he attends the conference where Melanie was due to speak. Jack is initially somewhat bemused by the obvious weirdness of the alien abductees, UN World Government resisters, and Satanic cult survivors that the now missing Melanie counted among her colleagues; but an apparently supernatural force, a murder, a corpse that simply ceases to be, and the re-appearance of the Rakoshi cause even him to start believing in conspiracies beyond our understanding. This Repairman Jack novel is well-written, intelligently plotted, and fun to read.
All The Rage is just as good, but more tightly focused. Not a Grand Unification Theory to be found here, just Serbian thugs, a dying Rakoshi — yes, they can be killed — and a drug made from the blood of this demon creature, which not only drives the user into a homicidal rage, but which erases all records of its existence when the lunar cycle ends. And I really mean all records — human memory, written notes, video tape, computer data, tissue samples … All act as if the drug never was. Jack gets involved this time because a scientist named Nadia Radminsky hires him to learn what connection exists between her boss at GEM Pharm and a Serbian nasty into drugs, murder, and violence that would make even Jack go pale. At the same time, a rival criminal wants Jack to kill Milos Dragovic, the Serbian in question. Now, Jack doesn’t kill as a general rule, but he takes both cases and quickly learns that Milos actually effectively is GEM, and the pharm company is producing a designer drug that has a shelf life of exactly to the minute that of a lunar cycle. Throw in a Rakoshi being kept captive in a sideshow slash nightmare circus straight out Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, and you have a nicely done, chillingly detailed horror novel.
Hosts is the latest novel in the series, but The Haunted Air will be out in October, so I know what I’ll be reading in late August when Tor/Forge sends along the Advanced Reading Copy of it! Hosts uses a concept that Emma Bull used in her Bone Dance novel — that of shared minds. Jack is asked to investigate a strange “cult” with which his sister Kate’s lover has become deeply, maddingly involved, following her apparent miracle recovery from a brain tumor. Initially thinking that he is dealing with con artists trying to manipulate victims who are susceptible to a well-run con, Jack takes the case. What he finds brings him face to face with an old and terribly evil enemy. But Jack has a bigger problem than the Rakoshi to deal with — the loss of his privacy and, of course, his ability to do what he does so well. Jack’s confrontation on a crowded subway with a would-be killer leads to a very hungry reporter trying to ferret out who he really is. And Jack can’t afford for anyone to know who he really is, or both he and those he cares for will certainly be killed in unpleasant ways.
The Repairman Jack novels started out as horror stories with a very strong supernatural bent, and have kept that feel throughout. Hosts is a bit more muted, but The Haunted Air apparently ups the horror feel quite a bit. If you like a fast-paced action series with a complex protagonist and a touch of horror, you can’t go wrong reading these novels.
(New English Library, 1985)
(Forge, 1998)
(Forge, 2000)
(Forge, 2000)
(Forge, 2001)
