Repairman Jack is asked to do a routine job for a lady in this latest series novel. It helps to know that Jack repairs situations, not toasters, and the only people who know about Repairman Jack are those who need him. He lives off the grid, he believes in justice and is somewhat of a paranoiad, he has a lot of guns and skills that go beyond weapons, man nondescript in appearance who is comfortable in the shadows.
This is not Jack's sort of job, but the lady is concerned about her 18-year-old daughter taking up with Jerry Bethlehem, a guy twice the girl's age who appears okay on the surface, but gives the mother bad vibes. She hasn't heard from a private investigator she hired to look into Bethlehem's past and wants to know what's going on.
Her instincts are good, as Jack discovers, and the investigation leads him to the dead P.I. Digging further, he discovers that the Creighton Institute and it's work with DNA and violent criminals factors into Bethlehem's story. But what's going on? And a subplot about the cultish Kickers turns out to have direct relevance to what's going on as Jack is again reminded of the repeated warning that there will be no coincidences in his future.
In the first book of the series of thrillers, The Tomb, Wilson had a strong supernatural undercurrent. An Indian politician seeking revenge against the descendants of a British military officer comes to New York with a shipload of the revived demonic rakosh, to wipe out the remaining family members before returning to his homeland where he will use the creatures to seize power. Subsequent novels backed off somewhat from the supernatural undercurrent without dismissing it entirely.
That continues to hold true for much of this novel. But with each novel, the paranormal element increases as Jack gets closer to his ultimate world-threatening confrontation with the Other. With his novels about Jack, Wilson is filling in the gap between The Tomb and the final confrontation with a paranormal force called the Other, Nightfall, published several years ago.
In case you are confused, Nightfall actually ended two converging series, the Childe Cycle and the Repairman Jack series, which at the time was only intended to be one novel, The Tomb. But it seems Wilson has a fondness for Jack as do his many readers, so he's written ten sequels to The Tomb and another is on its way.
This is a story that pulls you through it at breakneck speed.
