Repairman Jack, the Adversary and The Secret History of the World - the works of F Paul Wilson

A few weeks ago I was playing about with Twitter and I saw a post about an old horror film I'd never heard of, The Keep, which was about to be removed from Netflix.  I was intrigued and watched a bit. The soundtrack was good but the film itself was pretty terrible.  Then I read a bit about the original author, F Paul Wilson, and his work.

I was going on holiday and I'd just bought a new Kindle so I thought I would check out some of his work.  I downloaded The Tomb, the second book in the Adversary cycle and the debut of Repairman Jack and I was hooked.  In under a month I have read about 20 books in the series.

Jack is an interesting anti-hero.  He's a libertarian, almost an anarchist who refuses to pay taxes and is very fond of guns.  He develops over the course of 15 or so books and F Paul Wilson, almost literally, puts his hero through hell.  In some ways he reminds me of Rorschach or Batman but he does have at least some humanity as demonstrated by his relationship with his girlfriend Gia and her daughter Vicky.

The books mix horror, fantasy, Lee Child style thrillers and science fiction.  There is also a healthy dash of gun nut action hero.

Jack is not all of F Paul Wilson's Adversary cycle.  There is also the big bad evil, Rasalom and the once immortal source of good, Glaekon.  Reborn is a bit of a riff on The Omen and we meet Father Bill, a noble Catholic priest who has his belief challenged there.  There is also The Touch, a book about a GP (family practitioner) who gains the ability to heal with a touch.  At a price. So far, so Stephen King.

However, F Paul Wilson is a doctor and he writes doctors and medicine well.  He writes neurology well (which pleases me) and he gives his understanding of medical practice to his fictional doctor.  He understands the demands of trying to help people.  Unsurprisingly, his doctor is a libertarian who is opposed to medical guidelines and regulations and doesn't like to pay taxes.  There is a pattern here.

Outside the main narrative, other books and short stories fit in.  Black Wind is set in San Francisco, Hawaii and Japan between 1926 and 1945 and ties in with the Repairman Jack series as well as the Adversary Cycle.  It also works well as a stand a long historical/horror novel whilst looking at the relationship between Japan and America in the first half of the 20th century.

Sibs is another stand alone novel that ties in very tangentially. It's probably inessential to the main narrative but is worth a read.  The Peabody Ozymandias Travelling Circus & Oddity Emporium is better and more tied to the central narrative.  It reminds me of the old 1930's horror film Freaks.  It raises some thoughts about how society treats people who are unlucky enough to be different.

If you decide to start working through the books I would suggest using a Kindle.  I would try and read the main book in order as described HERE. I've still not actually read the Keep (too expensive on Kindle) so you can miss some out but I did enjoy not knowing how things would end until I read Nightwatch (the final book).  Several of my predictions were satisfyingly wrong.

I am now working my way through the various short stories and novellas that tie into things.  This will keep me happy for a few weeks.  Eventually I will run out of material and I will be sad.  F Paul Wilson is still writing I think and I will continue reading.