Legacies

by F. Paul Wilson

The second Repairman Jack novel; in this episode, Jack is hired by a pediatrician who works with HIV-positive children to investigate the secret of her father’s will. He has left his house to her, and her half-brother wants it, and bizarrely, he’s backed by a very wealthy mysterious group. And more bizarrely, she doesn’t want to sell the house or have anything to do with it. Of course, there are secrets within secrets, and soon Jack is crawling through air ducts, getting shot and being tailed by a Japanese assassin, among other adventures.

A terrific read, just as exciting and enthralling as the first, another page-turner even (again) at 430 pages. Wilson's villains, as in the last book, are fully-fleshed humans with desires and motives and fears. For example, one killer has a grandmother with Alzheimer's, and an Arab mastermind feels guilt for the deaths he causes as well as for his shameful urges around the Victoria’s Secret catalog. This attention to characterization has two effects. First, combined with the relatively restrained heroics of Jack, it makes Wilson’s world richer and more credible. Second a bit more disturbingly, it helps makes the reader see Jack, when he finally wreaks his relentless vengeance, as very much a cold-blooded man possessed by fury and totally outside any civilized "system." 

four stars

Moby-Dick

by Herman Melville
1851

Having never read this classic but knowing a bit about it, I think I was expecting a dry, meandering discourse.  But what this book is, is possibly the finest American novel.  Seriously, I never believed that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn had a rival for the title of Great American Novel, but this just might be it.  It has its share of meandering discourse, but also unexpected humor, both high and low; sheer drama; poetry; amusingly dated amateur scientific investigations; tragedy; and, of course, what may be the greatest character in American literature, Ahab.

Ahab is a masterpiece; he’s a compressed ball of madness and drive powered by a monstrous will to power, but Melville tempers his character with flashes of humanity and compassion, flashes which are driven back by Ahab’s overriding thirst for vengeance.  While the entire opus has some of the most eloquent prose this side of Shakespeare – no kidding – it’s Ahab who gets the really good lines.  “Ye see an old man cut down to the stump; leaning on a shivered lance; propped up on a lonely foot. 'Tis Ahab – his body's part; but Ahab's soul's a centipede, that moves upon a hundred legs. I feel strained, half stranded, as ropes that tow dismasted frigates in a gale; and I may look so. But ere I break, ye'll hear me crack; and till ye hear that, know that Ahab's hawser tows his purpose yet.”  This is, quite simply, a mind-altering masterpiece.

five stars

The Tomb

by F. Paul Wilson

The first novel of Repairman Jack — a New Yorker who lives outside the system: without taxes, a SSN, or any other traceable ID.  Posing as an appliance repairman, he actually does violent revenge work for those who pay him.  When the elderly aunts of his estranged girlfriend Gia are kidnapped, she reluctantly comes to him for aid.  Jack is then drawn into a crime based on a century-old supernatural curse involving Kali worship, rakoshi, and two proud Indians with magic necklaces.

Part of the book relies on a very wildly improbable coincidence (Jack is hired by the aunts' kidnapper on an unrelated matter the same day he's hired by Gia), though that hardly signifies in a book that deals with demons and magic.  And the surprises (such as what the magic necklace's power is) are surprises only to Jack, but that's okay too.  Jack is a very likeable driven anti-hero, and Wilson is adept at pulling the reader in with drama and suspense.  And even though the horrors Jack faces are real evil, Wilson’s characters are not cardboard; the villain has his own doubts, fears and credible motivations.  A terrific page-turner, even at 440 pages.

four stars