by Ray Wallace

Infernal
by F. Paul Wilson
Forge      

Jack is back! But is he as good as ever?

Here, F. Paul Wilson presents us with his ninth Repairman Jack book (the others being, in order, The Tomb, Legacies, Conspiracies, All the Rage, Hosts, The Haunted Air, Gateways, and Crisscross). Now, this has been a highly inventive and entertaining series revolving around, you guessed it, a man named Jack who is a sort of mercenary-for-hire living in New York City who tries to right the wrongs committed against his clients in creative and effective ways. Oh, yeah, all of this while battling the forces of the Otherness—a sort of cosmic, evil intelligence—and protecting the few people who are close to him. For me, a new repairman Jack book is always something to look forward to. The author is a compelling storyteller with a very readable style who hasn't let me down yet. Nor does he with his latest effort, Infernal, although I must admit that this one does not rank among my favorites of the series.

The book opens with Jack worrying about an impending visit from his father. The two of them were once estranged for many years largely due to Jack's secretive lifestyle. But in Gateways all that changed as father and son were brought together by events beyond their control, were forced to battle a strange cult in the Florida Everglades, and ended up bonding in the process. Now his father wishes to visit him on his home turf, to find out more about the son he feels he hardly even knows. Jack is a loner by nature and is, despite the recent closeness the two of them have shared, uncomfortable with the whole idea. But he soon realizes that there are much worse things than having his father intrude upon the web of privacy he has woven about himself, like having his father gunned down by Muslim extremists upon his arrival at La Guardia airport.

Besides the shock and grief Jack is forced to cope with and his lust for revenge over the killing, he finds that he suddenly has a rather serious problem to deal with. Jack has lived behind a string of false IDs for many years now. The real Jack doesn't exist as far as the government is concerned. Thus he has no way of proving his relationship with his father and claiming the body. Now he is forced to contact another estranged relative, his brother Tom, and ask him to get involved so that their father can have a proper funeral.

Tom is a big-shot judge in Philadelphia. Wife. Two kids. A guy who has it all. But there is one small problem. He's gotten himself involved with some very crooked dealings and has suddenly found himself on the wrong end of a federal investigation. And now he needs Jack's help. Jack wouldn't turn down a brother in need, would he? No, of course not. So he accompanies Tom on a little boating trip to Bermuda where Tom has a nice chunk of money stashed away in a safety deposit box. The trip turns into a treasure hunt when Tom shows Jack a certain map in his possession, one that supposedly marks the location of a ship that sank in the Bermuda waters hundreds of years ago that has gone undiscovered ever since. But was the ship's sinking an accident or an intentional act of sabotage so its cargo might lie hidden beneath the waves forever? Soon, the two brothers realize that the treasure they find was better off left undiscovered. And now it seems they may each have to make an unthinkable sacrifice to save the life of an innocent.

Infernal is a fun, fast-paced read, much like its predecessors. The plotline here is much simpler, however, dealing almost entirely with the treasure hunt and its ensuing consequences. And that is my one complaint about the book. There are none of the trademark intertwining storylines one has come to expect from a Repairman Jack novel. This book also contains only one of Jack's "fixes"—the imaginative ways in which he solves his clients' problems—and it is not all that inventive. All in all, though, most fans of the series will find this latest addition entertaining enough. And leave them hungering for more.