Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #332644 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-18
• Released on: 2007-09-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A monstrous scheme to create an evil superman through crude efforts at gene jiggering bedevils urban mercenary Repairman Jack in his 11th outing (after 2006's Harbingers). When Jack, a New York City paranormal fixer, agrees to help Christy Pickering break up a relationship between her 18-year-old daughter and an older man, Jerry Bethlehem, he discovers Bethlehem is a violent criminal whose past includes abortion clinic bombings and a stay at a government-funded clinic conducting DNA research. Pickering is circumspect about her own background and her daughter's paternity. When Jack probes unspoken links between Pickering and Bethlehem, his investigation intrudes inexplicably upon a shady self-help guru. Sinuous plot twists and shocking revelations abound, but Wilson manages to pull these wildly disparate plot threads together, and tie them dexterously to the series' overarching chronicle of a battle between occult forces in which Jack serves as a reluctant but responsible warrior. Like its predecessors, this novel shows why Jack's saga has become the most entertaining and dependable modern horror-thriller series. (Oct.)
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Review
Praise for New York Times bestseller Harbingers:
 "Part hard-boiled detective novel, part "Matrix"and all fun, Wilson's latest and, perhaps, greatest kept me up all night.  A pulse-pounding novel that grips you by the throat and doesn't let go even when it's over." --Eric Van Lustbader, author of The Testament
 
"F. Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack is a cultural icon.  If you haven't crossed paths with him, you're out of the loop.  Get with the program." --David Morrell, author of Creepers
"Provides everything that fans of this excellent and frequently horrific series have come to expect." -- Publishers Weekly

About the Author
F. PAUL WILSON, the New York Times bestselling author of ten previous Repairman Jack novels, is a practicing physician and lives in Wall, New Jersey.

Customer Reviews

Is there a "meh" rating?
I've read all the RJ novels and this one was by far my least favorite. While it shared may of the same problems as HARBINGERS (mostly a meandering supernatural plotline and little-to-no "fixin'"), this novel had the added "bonus" of just sort of...stopping.

There is no real wrapping up of the story, just sort of an intermission until it picks up in the next book; while this isn't the first time I have seen this tactic used for series-style novels, it never fails to bother the heck out of me.

It's getting harder and harder for me to care about Jack's exploits, mostly because they are getting more and more unbelievable. There is a particular part of the book that really seemed to be jumping the shark (a particular novelist of the "Jake Fixx" persuasion; deliver me from writer's in-jokes...), and all in all I wished that it had been closer to the earlier Jack books - more fixin', less supernatural-related nonsense.

One of the best in the series...
Wilson is still going strong in his latest Repairman Jack book. If you like supernatural thrillers, like the X-files, you will love Repairman Jack. Not quite as much action as some of Wilsons other books, but the story more than makes up for this. It is a very hard book to put down.

Solid Repairman Jack Novel
For those new to the series, Repairman Jack doesn't officially exist. He has no social security number, no tax records, no legal identity of any kind. When people have a problem, he's available to fix it. For a price. He has also been sucked into a kind of underground war between two god-like entities. One called the Otherness would destroy the Earth as we know it and the Ally would preserve things as they are.

In this installment of the series, Jack gets a client, Christy Pickering, whose 18 year-old daughter, Dawn, has gotten involved with a man old enough to be her father. Christy believes the man is trouble and wants Jack to dig up the dirt. The case seems simple enough on the surface but before long Jack is knee deep in a government conspiracy, genetic experimentation, and even abortionist murders in Atlanta. While key elements of the story tie back to the ongoing struggle between the Ally and the Otherness, the foes Jack must deal with are strictly human with no supernatural abilities.

Bloodlines is a medium length novel at 400 pages long, and the story moves along at a solid pace from start to finish. In many of the Repairman Jack novels, the fix-it work is little more than a launching pad before the story veers into utter craziness that Jack has to deal with. This time around, the focus is squarely on one fix from beginning to end. Wilson used a similar tack in Crisscross: A Repairman Jack Novel (Repairman Jack) and it definitely makes for a nice change.

The supporting cast is not a strength in this installment, but that's okay because Jack carries most of the load as usual. Christy consistently does exactly whatever Jack tells her not to and puts both herself and Jack in danger as a result. This happens over and over again. Her daughter is an airhead with an irritating valley girl dialect that "like, totally" gets on my nerves. The villain was more interesting, but doesn't provide much of a challenge for Jack. The book would have benefited from upping his danger quotient so that the reader felt more nervous about Jack's safety instead of just the women in the story.

Bloodlines is a solid Repairman Jack novel. The story is interesting and moves at a good pace. There is a reasonable amount of suspense and the struggle between the Otherness and Ally continues to move closer to its climax. If you're already a fan of the series, it's well worth picking up. If you're new to Repairman Jack, you would do better to start with The Tomb (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack) which introduced Jack to the world or The Haunted Air : Repairman Jack (Repairman Jack) (Repairman Jack), which is possibly the best of the series so far.