Bloodline

Repairman Jack stories are so excellent that I can’t put it onto words, so I won’t try. But the new narrator is terrible. The tone of his voice is lilting and hard to hear with any background noise and he mumbles and makes every character sound as slimy as Vinnie Doughnuts. Jack DOES NOT talk like this. If I turn the volume up enough to try and capture the narrators over dramatic mumbling, the sound distorts when he moves back to a normal volume. I don’t know if this is the narrator himself or his direction, but it makes a very good story so much harder to enjoy. I see the same guy is reading the next book… boo.

This story and the ones that follow are part of speeding up the pace of the adversary aspect (Ally vs. Otherness). As a result, the writing gets kind of lazy in various ways, which is a shame. In the past, some of the bad things that happened were advanced by bad decisions of the little girl Vicky and then her mom, both of whom matter to Jack, but also show bravery. But this book moves to 3 very stupid women, and that is a shame. One ignores sound advice with a clear reason, and does so multiple times – all used as a Deus ex machina. Likewise the other who is supposedly very bright but makes one dumb decision after another and seems way too clueless to be a top student. Finally a personality-free woman who lacks any morals or ethics (without explanation as to why) and is the explanation for absurd decisions made in the name of the Federal government. None of it feels even slightly real and none of it is explained via the otherness aspect, just dumb people, tossed in to advance the plot line.
Also, Jack acts so out of character in dealing with the ultra-bad guy; it is a kind of premeditated action that violates his code and his behavior – similar to a very long past event in revenge of his mother’s death (but that event is what defines his code now, so it makes no sense for him to act this way now).
It was a disappointment to me as the previous books are well crafted and the character’s strengths and weaknesses are big aspects of the books. I will likely read to the end of the series, but sad to see this laziness in the name of quickening the main story arc.

I’m way behind on my “Repairman Jack” novels. I have four hardcover books sitting up on my bookshelves that I’m just now starting to read: Bloodline, By the Sword, Ground Zero, and Fatal Error. I’ve been buying the books, but I’ve held off from reading them, knowing the series was nearing its end. I think Mr. Wilson plans on one or two more books before bringing Jack to a close. I’ve been reading the “Repairman Jack” novels since The Tomb was first published in paperback during the mid-eighties (F. Paul Wilson is also the author of The Keep, which was published in 1981). That’s almost three decades and a long time. Hell, I’ve actually been reading Wilson’s fiction since The Keep. Anyway, I started seeing Viggo Mortensen as Jack about six years ago, and that has stuck in my mind. I keep hoping he’d play Repairman Jack in the movie adaptation, but who knows. Anything can happen in Hollywood.

In Bloodline, Jack is still recovering emotionally from the near-death of his girlfriend, Gia, and her daughter, Vicky (see Harbingers). Their unborn baby died after the attempted murder. Jack has been holding off on telling Gia that she and Vicky were targeted because of him. He doesn’t know how she’d react to that shocking piece of news. To keep busy, he takes a case involving a mother who thinks her daughter is going to get hurt in a relationship with an older man. Of course, this being a “Repairman Jack” novel, everything is not as it seems, and the boyfriend of the daughter is part of the plan for the “Others” to eventually take over the world. As Jack investigates the boyfriend, he discovers a hidden connection to a bestselling “self-help” guru that seems to originate with the Creighton Institute for criminally insane and perhaps a closely guarded plan for the creation of the “Key to the Future” that is necessary before the Others can take over. Jack will certainly have his hands full as he attempts to find out exactly what’s going on and how he’s tied into it, knowing there are no coincidences and that the day of reckoning is quickly approaching.

My major problem with the “Repairman Jack” novels is that the story lines all take place within months of each other, though the books are written years apart. I need to go back to the beginning and start over with the series so that the time line makes sense to me. That, however, doesn’t stop me from enjoying the books and especially the character of Jack. Jack is an urban mercenary who lives underground (fake drivers license, Social Security Card, credit cards, license plates for his car, etc.) so there’s no record of him in the system. Jack doesn’t exist on paper, and he prefers it that way. He doesn’t trust the government, and I honestly don’t blame him. To live the life of the “everyday man” would’ve gotten him killed years ago. As it is, he may not have long to live with the finale coming up.

F. Paul Wilson has created an anti-hero in the form of Repairman Jack. Though he breaks the law in numerous ways, he’s loyal to his friends and tries to help those in need of his special abilities. I only wish Jack was real, instead of a fictional character. We have need of men like Jack to help guard our rights as Americans and human beings. They see life as black and white, and aren’t afraid to do whatever is vital for our continued existence. In other words, Repairman Jack is the Man! He’s the dude who’ll cover your back when the going gets tough. You can trust him to keep his word and to do what’s morally right, no matter what the consequences.

Repairman Jack is one of the foremost characters in fiction today with few contemporaries who can equal his persistence in getting to bottom of every mystery he encounters. This is why there’s a “Repairman Jack” fan club with Stephen King as its top member. This is also a series you don’t want to see end, but everything seems to run its course, much as life does, and Jack is nearing his final days. I just hope to be there for the explosive ending with Jack hopefully defeating the Otherness for humanity’s sake. Highly Recommended!

With BLOODLINE, you can see the final act of the Repairman Jack series begin. Wilson has talked about how everything will lead up to a grand conclusion in Nightworld which will be rewritten to better tie in to all the previous novels. By leaving some of the plot lines open at the end of the novel, we can see how events will start to cumulate.

BLOODLINE has Jack being hired by Christy Pickering to break up her teenaged daughter Dawn’s relationship with a much older Jerry Bethlehem. It turns out that Jerry is on a mission from his father to create a baby with a large amount of “other” DNA and who will end up being a key factor in the fate of the world. We are also introduced to the Kickers movement which in addition to the oDNA seems to be tapped into the Otherness that is guiding Jack’s nemesis across the novels.

While it doesn’t sound it from my description above, this book is grounded in reality a bit more than the more supernatural-based two previous novels. Jack’s actions have a more concrete goal and a more immediate effect on his future than previous novels. Plus he starts to accumulate mysterious items which we know will become important by the end.

I read this as part of the 15 book series. Once I started, I was hooked to the end of the last book.

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