Ground Zero (Repairman Jack Series #13) »

F. Paul Wilson, the New York Times bestselling author of the Repairman Jack novels, lives in Wall, New Jersey.

On September 11, 2001, a man drifts in a boat off lower Manhattan as the towers burn. He removes a small box from his pocket and presses a button. As he waits for the south tower to collapse, he thinks: No one—absolutely no one—will guess the truth behind the who and why of this day.

Years later, Jack’s childhood friend, Weezy Connell, fits together the pieces of the puzzle and anonymously posts her conclusions on the Web. When someone comes after her, Jack becomes involved in her troubles and in the paranoid maze of the 9/11 Truth Movement, where conspiracy theories point in every direction.

They’re all wrong. The truth is stranger, darker, and more evil than anyone can imagine. And if the plot behind it--millennia in the planning--succeeds, it will forever change life on this Earth.

Publishers Weekly

Wilson's less than satisfying 13th Repairman Jack novel (after By the Sword) blends 9/11 conspiracy theories with a threat to all life on Earth from otherworldly beings. In the author's alternative history, a shadowy figure floating in a boat in New York harbor causes the collapse of the Twin Towers independently of the suicidal al-Qaeda hijackers by detonating explosives in both buildings. Several years later, Eddie Connell seeks out Repairman Jack, heir to the role of “point man in the war against the Otherness.” Eddie needs Jack's help in finding his forensic scientist sister, Weezy, whom they trace to a New York City hospital ward. Because Weezy had uncovered suspicious stock trading in advance of the World Trade Center attack as well as the editing out of a man from photos of bin Laden and his top deputies, her life is in peril. The apocalyptic plot and frenetic action fail to add up to a chilling read. (Sept.)