It's Time for A Little Fixin'

I’ve done movie blogs, TV blogs and any other thing you can think of. Including cartoons, comics, etc.

But none was done on a novel.

More specifically it’s dubbed part of the Repairman Jack series. My introduction to it comes a little late in the game with book nine entitled “Harbingers.” In short, it is the taste of things to come spearheading several science fiction motifs. Not to mention a few supernatural elements that might pop up to throw the reader off.

With a prior history to the series character, there’s a lot of catching up to do. I feel like I’ve been dropped into the middle of a battleground without any knowledge of what the hell is going on.

I must trend lightly.

Repairman Jack is the literary fiction character created by F. Paul Wilson who makes his first appearance in the Tomb in the early 1980s. This character was meant as someone who appeared in a string of novels. But, being larger than life, with a wealth of history of his own, he has outgrown his supporting role status to get his own book series.

Repairman Jack is the fix it guy you can go to if you’re in trouble with something beyond the law. He’s there to straighten the situation out that calls for extra leaning, some muscle work that might include guns, explosives and a perhaps a round of property damage. His intentions is to help the little guy not become a victim of a cross-fire. He exists well outside the world of identity.

He carries no social security number. He works on his own New York City turf. Jack knows how to use a gun if he needs to.

When I first read the book “Harbingers,” Jack is first asked by a close friend of his to find a missing niece who is believed abducted. There is a catch. The girl goes missing for more than a day and Jack is on the trail in finding her. Many of his fix-its deal with strange cults, kidnappings such as the one in “Harbingers.”

Then the entire universe is turned upside down, and sideways, when Repairman Jack finds himself having another role in the midst of things. There is an ongoing war between great cosmic forces that governs the course of the human race. They are like shadows and light. Heaven and darkness. The shape of the war brings stirs from the dire influences caused by the opposing forces.

The novel “Harbingers” is on the edge of this unholy war that’s breaking out. And Jack finds himself taking sides. Not by choice. His life has been a living hell. His loved ones has been discarded throughout the books such as his mother, father and brother. His family has become casual targets. In this book it is his girlfriend and unborn child that becomes the latest twig that is snapped off from the tree of life.

Jack has become a loner. And this prepares him for the war that he will be facing soon.

In some ways, he is almost a pawn between the unseen forces that moves him around like a ping pong. And that pisses him off. It’ll be interesting to see how the deciding factor of his actions will put the war into motion.

I like how F. Paul Wilson is working his novels. He connects everything. In such as way that it’ll come to a full circle sooner or later. His novels and short stories share a common universe that is its own. This is how H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard of the old pioneering days of pulp fiction wrote their share of fiction. By interconnecting and referring. They created their own landscape filled with imaginative creatures.

Wilson manages to handle that well in his books. But the Repairman Jack books won’t be around forever. The author says in his own words that he doesn’t want to run it to the ground. There’s going to be a beginning and an end to this. It was fun while it lasted. The author sees 2012 as being the last year for the series.

Hang on for the ride.

Set in New York City, the novel “Harbingers” gives a flavor of the metropolis in which the author himself lives in. He paints a good of the fiery city that seems to swell under the massive war that lingers over like a giant cloud. The possible victims? The human race.

Maybe Jack will wipe his hands of his responsibilities and let the human race choke on it? There’s no knowing which direction he might take after the book “Harbingers” sets his role into high gear. He’s also fuming in misery. He’s lost in his hatred for others. The final outcome of the war is yet to be determined.

There’s still some time left to get into the mix for new readers. There’s another, newer book on the shelf called “Bloodlines” which continues to narrate Jack’s involvement with the war. There may be a chance of further learn of his heritage of his roots in the battered, violent path.

There’s a lot for him to fix.

The universal repairman man, some might call him.

But it’s an interesting series of novel if one likes to follow through the events of Repairman Jack. There’s a sense of realism around the character and his profession. Yet, for other readers, the supernatural trends may draw them in. It is the fast pacing of writing and hardnosed action that remains furious. Most importantly: Jack is the everyday common man for the people.