GROUND ZERO: A Review

REJOICE! Repairman Jack is back! And the end-of-the-world as we know it is closer.


This series is finally coming together for an intricate conclusion. For more than two decades author F. Paul Wilson has been subtly pulling off an amazing literary feat - writing a VERY complex story in a series of novels which in hind sight are just smaller pieces of a much larger story. Even Wilson himself admits he did not realize the majority of his novels had some connecting tissue.

Jack's first appearance was in 1984's The Tomb, a slam bang action/horror story. Repairman Jack doesn’t deal with electronic appliances—he fixes situations for people, situations that usually involve putting himself in deadly danger. He is a cross between John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee and Andrew Vachss' Burke. In The Tomb Jack's project is recovering a stolen necklace, which carries with it an ancient curse that may unleash a horde of Bengali demons. Jack is used to danger, but this time his girlfriend Gia’s daughter Vicky is threatened.
Wilson himself wrote that:
"Jack arose from a dream. The scene on the roof in The Tomb was the dream. I worked backward and forward from there to create a character who could survive that situation. I have a wide libertarian streak, so I figured I’d make this guy an anarchic urban mercenary with no identity. By the time I reached the end of The Tomb, I realized I had a series character. I didn't feel I was ready to write a series then, so I left him bleeding to death at the end."

Jack put in a cameo appearance in Nightworld (1993) and in 1998 later Wilson got around to writing the second Repairman Jack novel, Legacies. Since then, there has been one RJ novel per year, with two more to come as the long, complicated story of Jack and the Secret History of the World subtly plays itself out. Wilson is even working on a re-vamped edition of Nightworld which will culminate the entire mythos that Wilson has been weaving through more than 20 novels.
Ground Zero reveals A LOT of juicy plot points but (as we were warned by Wilson) just abruptly ends. There is no easy wrap-up of the story because the story has two more novels to go. Of which millions of Jack fans are already waiting for .... breathlessly. If you're not up to speed on Jack ... Wilson's website RepairmanJack.com is a good place to start. Better yet, go pick up The Tomb start the journey. According to Jack, you've got about two years until the world comes to an end.

BIBLIO SAYS: Highly recommended.

Companion Read: The Tomb by F. Paul Wilson.