by Ray Wallace

The Haunted Air
By F. Paul Wilson
Gauntlet      


Review by Ray Wallace (812 words)

OVERVIEW: F. Paul Wilson is back with this his sixth Repairman Jack novel, the previous five being THE TOMB, LEGACIES, CONSPIRACIES, ALL THE RAGE, and HOSTS.

DETAILS: For those of you unfamiliar with the Repairman Jack novels the easiest way to describe them would be Andrew Vachss meets Stephen King, i.e., crime books with more than their fair share of supernatural horror. You see, Repairman Jack fixes things for people but not in the usual ways. The problems he deals with are much larger than a broken down car or malfunctioning appliance. Been swindled? Need to collect on a debt? Fear for your life? Looking for a little revenge? Jack's your man. For the right price, of course. Now this line of work can force a man to deal with some rather unsavory characters, human and otherwise. Take the previous book HOSTS, for example, where Jack had to do battle with a psycho on a subway train, a pair of criminals with a penchant for blowing things up, and a sentient virus set on taking over the world. Before that, in ALL THE RAGE, there was a dangerous new designer drug and the criminal masterminds behind its distribution, not to mention a collection of sideshow freaks. So what does our vaunted hero find himself up against in THE HAUNTED AIR, the latest installment in the ongoing Repairman Jack saga?

A ghost, of course. Not to mention a renowned psychic. Oh, yeah, and the man he is hired to keep an eye on, a man who it is believed might do something dangerous on the next full moon. But I'm getting ahead of myself…

THE HAUNTED AIR opens at a party. Nothing crazy. A little gathering of artiste types, friends of Jack's girlfriend Gia who are celebrating the fact that one of their own is starting to make it big. Not jack's cup of tea by any stretch of the imagination but if it makes Gia happy… At some point one of Gia's friends invites her and Jack to come visit her psychic Ifasen with her. She needs the psychic's help finding a lost lucky bracelet and since his place is nearby... Reluctantly, Jack agrees and soon finds himself pulling up in front of Ifasen's spooky old colonial-style house. As he and Gia walk up to the house an Indian woman walking a dog approaches them, tells them not to enter the house, that it is "a very bad place." They ignore the warning, enter the house at Ifasen's invitation, and just as they walk through the front door an earthquake shakes the house followed by a sound that is eerily reminiscent of a high-pitched scream.

And so a series of events unfolds that drags Jack and those he loves neck deep into danger. It seems that Ifasen is at war with a local nationally renowned psychic angered at the business he has stolen. There have been attempts on Ifasen's life - - and his bother's - - and he needs Jack's help in bringing the rival psychic down. No problem, it turns out that Jack has some experience in the whole psychic game and is looking forward to ruining a person whom he knows is nothing more than a fraud, a con artist feeding on the desperate and the gullible. Then there is the matter of the earthquake and the entity it has apparently released. A massive fracture has been opened in the basement of Ifasen's house and ever since there have been more than a few incidents of disturbing and unexplainable phenomena. Add to that another job that Jack has been hired to do by a man claiming that his brother is going to harm someone with the next full moon. Can Jack follow him, make sure that he is not allowed to hurt anybody? Seems simple enough but of course there is much more going on here than he was previously led to believe.

F. Paul Wilson has a talent for intertwining apparently unrelated plot lines, for bringing them together into a coherent whole. And in an ingenious move he has incorporated the idea of "the Otherness" to this series, a vast, cosmic intelligence suspected of maneuvering events and people for its own purposes, making situations that would otherwise be considered sheer coincidence seem planned, almost inevitable. Repairman Jack is an incredibly likeable character, a man living outside the law following a code of ethics and a worldview that one cannot help but respect. And THE HAUNTED AIR, like the books that preceded it, is filled with enough chills and actions sequences for the most die-hard fans of both horror and thriller novels alike. Long live Repairman Jack!

BOTTOM LINE: Another highly entertaining edition to the Repairman Jack saga. One can only hope that F. Paul Wilson writes at least another six of these books. A series well worth continuing.