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